


What You Know, And What You Don't

by fluffernutter8



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years and miles away from Neptune, the people he grew up with wouldn't recognize Logan. But that wasn't an issue until a national news case brought one of those people back into his life. Logan/Veronica. Post-series, non movie canon compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Here's the thing: ten years ago when Logan begged some higher power he didn't believe in to make him a high school English teacher? He wasn't being _serious_. It was a joke. He was just being his obnoxious teenage self.

And yet somehow his slightly less obnoxious adult self was still walking up and down the aisles with a stack of paperbacks, assigning chapters one through five of Catcher in the Rye, due Monday.

"You guys will get along with Holden Caulfield because he's a little crazy and has no effing clue what to do with his life. Also because he hangs out with some prostitutes." Finished distributing the novels, he walked to the front of the room and found a space to squeeze "batshit," "dazed and confused" and "hookers" onto the board before pounding his palm next to the words. "Take this down. Important info for life, but more important for the test." A ripple of laughter ran through the room before the bell rang for lunch and no amount of teacher-induced amusement could keep thirty fourteen-year-olds from leaping from their seats like they were on fire. Logan was glad he didn't have lunch duty.

"Monday, you guys. Don't be bullshitting me about forgetting then," Logan shouted after them, but he was smiling. He flipped his book in the air and caught it before turning to erase the board. The copy he was using was his own- scribbled in and highlighted everywhere- but he had ended up buying each kid the same edition, so they didn't have to worry about being on different pages. The school had actually already had a sufficient number of copies of Catcher, unlike some of the other books he wanted to teach like 1984 or any Shakespeare other than Macbeth or Hamlet. But they were falling apart and he wouldn't have been surprised if the same copies had been used by his kids' parents. He was hoping that the new ones he'd gotten from Barnes and Noble would be banged up enough to fool old Mrs. Krazny next door when her class got a turn with Salinger in a few weeks.

Logan did that a lot, actually. He hadn't set out to do it, but when he'd arrived at Jackson High, things were so bad, he couldn't help it. Other than keeping a sharp eye for kids who were moving oddly or looked especially afraid to go home, he would sometimes take monetary action: new shoes in the lockers of kids whose old ones were falling off their feet, a chunk of grocery money if the cafeteria seemed to be serving progressively smaller portions of aging leftovers. It wasn't like the other teachers didn't buy stuff for their classrooms- the numbers on teacher-purchased supplies in the classroom were actually insane- but he didn't want to call more attention to himself than necessary. So he always kept it anonymous, and he was pretty sure the other teachers didn't know. Dr. Curtis did, but then, he had done a background check on Logan Lester when he had first come to the school.

Dr. Curtis was a success story: a Jackson student who had escaped the neighborhood, gone to college, risen through the ranks of higher education and then come back to try to help other kids along the same path he had taken. He had worked his ass off to do what he had, and was so much more dedicated a principal than his predecessor, or that golfing creep Moorehead from Neptune, or even Clemens, that it was laughable. When he had arrived two years ago, Dr. Curtis had established a uniform to eliminate gang colors and promote school unity. Kids had egged his car, graffitied his house and cursed at him in the halls. But Curtis had waded through all the shit, and the crime levels in the school were actually beginning to decrease. It made Logan admire him more. But no matter how well Dr. Curtis was doing, how many grant proposals he wrote, how hard he worked and how much he cared, he couldn't make money appear out of thin air. When he realized that it was, Curtis had given Logan a look of thanks and never mentioned it aloud. Which was, as far as Logan was concerned, the perfect way to express that gratitude.

Toward the end of his first year at Jackson, Logan had found a girl, Tasha, crying in the back of the library during lunch. She wasn't one of his students, but he had recognized her because she had asked him to be the advisor for a club she was trying to start, debate or mock trial or something like that. He had said yes, but not enough kids had been interested. That afternoon he had knelt down and asked what was wrong, hoping that his discomfort didn't show. Tasha held up a letter from Bowie State, one of the smaller schools in the University of Maryland system.

Logan had said gently, "Tasha, this is an acceptance letter."

"So what?" she had spat. "My family can't even afford the deposit. No way we can swing tuition, even with the aid they're giving me."

"Why don't you talk to Mr. Preston?" he had suggested. "Sometimes guidance counselors have strings they can pull with colleges to help out kids who deserve it."

Tasha had wrinkled her nose, suppressing a snort by only the barest margin. "Preston's too busy earning his rich kid stripes being a one-man war on drugs to be pulling any strings for me." She had smacked her head back against the wall, looking more exhausted and sad than angry. "Four big brothers, and not one of them even made it past the eleventh grade. But I was smarter. I worked harder, I got my hopes up. I was gonna make it, Mr. L. I was gonna be the one." She had balled up the letter and tossed it away. "And now it was all for shit."

Logan had been the one who ended up pulling the strings for Tasha, getting her the merit scholarship that she had earned with minimal effort. But it turned out that not every case was like hers, so ripe that it burst as soon as he touched at the fruit. Sometimes you really just needed to lay down the money. So the next year, Logan had kept his eyes and ears open for kids who were smart and motivated, who had the grades and the drive to make it out, but lacked the cash. It wasn't like he lured them into his classroom with the promise of tuition. When acceptance time came around, he would inquire about extra financial aid for them. If their favorite college balked, he would say that an anonymous donor had come forward who would guarantee a full ride.

He was choosy about who got such endowments. He gave it his all in the classroom, but not even Aaron's bank account could sustain sending an overcrowded high school of kids to college indefinitely. Still, he gave seven or eight of them a start each year. He had started dabbling in the stock market, hoping to earn enough to sponsor a couple more kids. His years of gambling were actually paying off. He played it smart, going with his instincts, and he was pretty sure he could start investing in another kid or two per year.

When the door to his classroom opened, he thought it was one of the kids he was looking at for next year, Danny Webber. Danny was picked on a lot, and tended to spend as many lunch periods as possible in a book club of his own formation that included only him and Logan. It was usually on Tuesdays, and the staff knew to let him out of the caf, despite Dr. Curtis's rule about everyone staying inside to prevent as many deals and fights as possible. Still, Mrs. Krazny had a soft spot for Danny and if she was on duty, he could usually talk himself out no matter what day it was.

"What do you want to look at today?" he asked, not turning away from the board as he finished erasing it. "And Danny, if we're going to do the mid-nineteenth century dudes, can we ditch Poe for something with a little less depression, or at least a little more story? Irving or Longfellow or even some Hawthorne, I'm begging."

"I've had enough of scarlet letters to last me the rest of my life," Veronica Mars answered from behind him. And just like that, Logan wished he that had had lunch duty today.


	2. Chapter 2

            Logan spent the first minute kind of…blinking. Even after spending the past few years verbally dueling with foul-mouthed inner city kids, and many previous ones sparring with this exact grand dame herself, it took him fifteen solid breaths to recover.

            “You’d better shut the door before any of my kids see that I’m hanging out with a hot blond,” he finally said. Nothing close to his best, but he felt pretty lucky considering the other possibilities that his mouth could have chosen. He didn’t know exactly why he was so surprised to see her here. For the first couple years in D.C., he had almost expected this to happen, that he would be in a supermarket or a book store and she would be there, have searched him out. A lot of the time he imagined her default pissed expression, but sometimes she looked happy to see him or even said she was sorry. He could tell by the look on her face as she stood right in front of him, though, that she was really here for something else.

            “Let me guess,” he says, leaning against his desk, pressing his eyes together and resting fingers on either temple. “Years and miles and not a word, so Veronica Mars must need…a favor.” He dropped his fingers and opened his eyes, folding his arms across his chest instead. “How’d I do?”

            Surprisingly, she laughed. “Well, you’re one for one on the guessing, although your Kreskin impression could use work.”

            “It wasn’t Kreskin. I was trying out my Patrick Jane.”

            “Not great. Keep trying, kiddo.” She crossed her arms as well. “Although, am I really supposed to believe that you spend your nights all cuddled into your jammies watching Mentalist reruns with a bowl of popcorn?”

            “Well, for starters, you know for a fact that I’m not big on jammies. However, I am big on popcorn and bad men turned good. Also, I am secure enough to tell you that Simon Baker is killer in a three-piece suit.”

            “Disregarding the suit, three-piece or otherwise, I’m actually here to talk to you about bad men turned good.”

            “And here we are at the favor,” Logan sighed, collapsing into his desk chair. Even with that as an upfront incentive and the last time they had seen each other, it was surprisingly good to see Veronica again. Bantering with her so casually reminded him, just for a moment, of the actually enjoyable parts of his former spoiled life, of hanging out with Duncan and Lilly or when he thought Veronica might actually love him.

            “I don’t think you’re going to have a problem helping me out with this,” Veronica said. She reached into her bag, took out a file and handed it to Logan. He flipped it open to see four familiar faces. He sat up straighter.

            “You’re on this? For who?”

            She perched herself on the corner of his desk without invitation. “Officially, DC police, but I think the FBI might have a finger in the pie.”

            He whistled. “Playing with the big dogs now, Mars,” he said, leaning back in his chair and watching her smile mischievously before the two of them turned serious. “What do you need me for?”

            “Obviously you know the case,” she started and from her tone he could tell that she had been doing some kind of lecturing since they had last seen each other.

            He did know the case. Every teacher, student and parent, probably even the ones who were wasted most of the time, had heard about it over the past weeks. Deaths, even of the middle and high school kids he saw daily, were disturbingly common. Some fell victim to drugs or gang violence, others were simply wrong place-wrong time deals. But for the past few months someone had been targeting a younger demographic and it was finally drawing notice. The first one, in April, right before Easter, had seemed like an accident. Imani Duskin was three years old and had been found in an alley with a good reputation for dirty dealings and a poor one for survival. She was too young for school and her mother was one of those wasted most of the time, so no one had reported her missing until the end of the weekend when the aunt who usually watched her returned from visiting friends. By that time, there was really nothing to investigate. The scene had been compromised by other crimes, at least one of them another shooting. She had been known to play nearby and there was a stuffed animal with her. Her mother, despite her drug problem, didn’t appear to owe anyone and her father was dead. No witnesses came forward with anything helpful. The police declared it an accidental shooting and closed the case. A small article was published in the Post. The few people who noticed it sighed and despaired until they turned the page.

            But a week later there was another body, Zion Samuels, age five, in the same alley. The next week it was six year old Mikayla Dean and the police could no longer ignore the pattern. They stationed a squad car by the place people were now calling the Alley of Innocents, but Elijah Thomas, four, was found in another alley across the neighborhood. Now, at the start of the second week of May, everyone was keeping their children inside. But looking up at Veronica, Logan knew that something would happen anyway.

            “How long have you been on the case?”

            “Three days, but I just got here last night. I had to wrap some things up out in California.” She sighed. “It’s bad, Logan.”

            “No shit, it’s bad,” he said, slamming the file back onto the desk. The conversation might have started off well and of course he would still do whatever she asked, but thinking about these kids, whose combined ages added up to one high school graduate, had turned on the temper he tried to forget he had. “You’re hanging around doing what…waiting? Sitting on your hands until this sicko maybe leaves you a clue to track down with your magnifying glass and Nancy Drew Fingerprinting Set?!” He yanked the kids’ pictures off of the papers in her manila folder and brandished them at her. “I was supposed to teach these kids, Veronica! In ten or fifteen years, they were supposed to sit in those desks and try for something great.”

            He breathed heavily as the silence stretched over the classroom, trying to reign in his temper. He hoped that Mrs. Krazny was not doing lunch so Danny was still in the cafeteria. He might prod for his kids’ attention with cursing and ribald humor, but he had worked to put this reckless, crazed anger behind him.

After a minute Veronica began speaking. Her voice was deliberate and he noticed, now that he was looking, how tired she was. “I’m trying, Logan. They just brought me in. It was a totally botched job (and believe me, I have had more than words with the police here), this neighborhood is a mess-”

            “Yeah, don’t expect anyone to be rolling out the welcome mat for you. Tiny blond white girl going door to door doesn’t say Girl Scout to people in this neighborhood, it just freaks them out.” He kept his voice down, but all of his tics were coming out. He was getting worked up. He couldn’t keep still. “They’ll leave flowers and candles and teddy bears by that alley, but when it gets dark, they’re keeping their kids inside and their noses out of all this business. The policy is _Even if they ask, don’t tell_.”

            “Lose the attitude, Animal, or Electric Mayhem will be getting back on their bus and driving right on out of here.” Despite the circles under her eyes, the fire was still there too, and for some odd reason it brought him back down.

            “Animal was part of Electric Mayhem, you Muppet hating freak.”

            “And I want you to be a part of this mayhem,” she said, and he could see the head tilt coming before it happened. “We need to get something done to help these kids.” She picked up the file and pointed to some of the documents inside before carefully reattaching the photos he had taken. “There’s a male-female pattern and they’re all from the same broad demographic group, but other than that, the only connection we’ve found so far is that all of the kids had relatives who go here rather than Anacostia or Ballou High.”

            He crossed his arms. “I went to cop school at the totally underwhelming CSI University, but even I know that this is circumstantial stuff. You lay out your associations and patterns, but you’re just pretending that you have something because there’s a serial killer targeting little kids and you’re as lost as everyone else. They’re all from the same demographic because that’s the kind of people who live around here. And enrollment is run by neighborhood, so what’s the significance of relatives here at Jackson? Where’s your out-of-the-blue hipster hunch that people will scoff at before finding out it’s the real deal?”

            “Logan, this is my hunch,” she hissed. “This is the only thing we have, but I think that it’s a lead. And I need your help.” She laid her hands flat on his desk, businesslike. “I can get fake credentials and be the new geometry teacher by tomorrow afternoon, but no one would trust me and it will take far longer than it should to assess whether or not this is a legitimate direction for the investigation. But you know the kids and teachers here, you won’t be suspicious around the neighborhood and you’ve been here too long for anyone to think you’re a plant. You are the perfect resource.”

            “The perfect resource? Gosh, Veronica, I’ve been waiting all this time to hear you say that. If you’ll just write it down, I’ll keep your sentiment by my heart.” He patted his breast pocket, face mocking before the look on hers made him turn serious. “Yes. Of course I’m on board with this. Just tell me what to do and when, preferably with the ending being I get to cause some permanent damage to this guy when we get him. I’m assuming you don’t need my cell number?”

            She hid her relief well, but even after ten years, he could still see it. “Big Brother is always watching, of course. I’ll call you in the next couple of days with details.” She retrieved her folder and took a step back.

            “Hey, how’d you get in here? What’s your cover?” he remembered to ask quickly.

            “Reporter from the Washington Standard, May Pickering, here to look into the ups and downs of education at Jackson High.” She continued to move away as she spoke.

            “Veronica,” Logan called her back once again. “Why am I not a suspect?”

            She sighed subtly, though as a scholar of Veronica Mars, he heard it and knew it was not from exhaustion or impatience but because there was something she didn’t want to tell him. “I won’t lie. You were.” He looked away. “You seemed like a viable candidate. The name change, some serious allegations to your old one, history of abuse, moving across the country, lots of covert, large-scale activity going on in your bank account…that all looked really bad for you. But then they showed me pictures of your classroom.” He looked back at her and she pointed to one of his bulletin boards. “You have their essays hung up. Your dad never did that, not even when he was pretending.” Logan nodded. It wasn’t the answer about gut feelings and character and _of course I never suspected you_ that he might wish for, but things so rarely went the way he wished they would, and he just nodded and moved to prepare for his next class.

            “Hey,” she said before he had even sat down. He looked up again. She was still leaning against the door. “When I came in, you assumed that I was asking you for a favor.”

            “A correct assumption.”

            “Yeah,” she conceded, “But after the way I left, I would have expected that my reputation as Bitch of the Century was pretty cemented in your mind.”

            He leaned back in his chair and nodded his head. “You could have been here to accuse me of something, yes. But you surprised the quips right out of me for a minute and didn’t use the opportunity to insert your own.”

            “Surprised out of your quips? I’m going to have that published and framed.”

            “Just for a minute,” he called after her, but she had already pushed her back against his door and slipped out.


	3. Chapter 3

Logan finds himself holding his breath for the next couple days of class. He actually has to make an effort not to snap at the kids, something he hasn't needed to do since he was student teaching. He keeps an eye out more than usual for suspicious behavior, but the only different thing is an addition to Mrs. Krazny's insanity repertoire. Currently, it's perpetual forgetfulness bordering on dementia. She spends half of her third period on Thursday searching for the glasses she wears on a chain around her neck (her class is not inclined to remind her of their whereabouts), and approaches him three times to call him a poor boy and pinch his cheek and ask him what grade he'll be in next year. The rumor has always been that Mrs. Krazny lied about her birthday on her paperwork so she could keep teaching, and it's times like these that he tends to believe it because she is just so old.

He almost writes these occurrences down as a first, sarcastic entry in a spy journal for Veronica, but then realizes that it's not the kind of gesture he wants to put forward. He's not angry at Veronica for working this case, or even for wanting his help. He's not entirely sure what he'll do if he comes in to school or turns on the news in the morning and hears the name of the fifth dead child. And he knows that Veronica will do everything in her considerable power to ensure that he won't have to react to that.

But he doesn't want to befriend Veronica again. He is still simmering over the way they left things ten years ago and he's not sure what will happen when his mind decides to stop simmering and start reacting. More immediately, though, he is nervous and annoyed about Veronica's seemingly enduring presence in his life. He's worked to keep her out of his thoughts until it isn't an effort anymore, just an unconscious block. It isn't like there's a lot that he wants to remember from their glory days anyway. In fact, he pretty much ran through those good memories in the minute between first seeing Veronica and when she began to speak. The other stuff isn't constantly festering anymore- he's talked it out, and is fairly certain that the coming weeks, or hopefully days, won't find him in whatever dirty bar is closest- but the longer she stays, the more he is reminded of the things he would like to forget. Just a few days after seeing her face again and already he feels less comfortable and settled in DC. Also, despite his best efforts to the contrary, he can't help but wonder what it will be like once she's gone on to the next case. He can't quite force himself to be relieved at the prospect.

With all this swirling in his head, it takes him after hours to fall asleep. Thankfully, it's Saturday, so he's planning on a late morning followed by a soothingly boring day of laundry and grading papers, with a little pickup basketball if enough of the neighborhood guys are around. This plan is derailed quickly, however, by a quiet knocking noise on his front door around six AM. It doesn't jolt him awake but apparently his sleeping brain deems it noteworthy because he stirs, pausing to listen as the knocking becomes a soft scraping. At this, he climbs out of bed and goes to check the peephole. On four hours of sleep, it takes a moment to focus through it, but after a second, he can see out in the hall. At first he still doesn't see anything, but then notices a small fluffy fringe of blonde hair at the bottom of the view and he understands. Releasing his grip on the bat that he keeps by the door, he unlocks and swings it open.

"Creepiness factor successfully raised," he says wryly, leaning against the frame. "Congrats, Mars, you are now a level fifty stalker. Should I hide my pots and bunnies?"

"Fifty is amateur. You need to be removing any copies of Catcher in the Rye from the vicinity," Veronica says, standing and brushing off the knees of her jeans before she steps past him into his apartment.

Logan picks up his school copy from the end table by the sofa. "Well, that'll be a little hard. Think you can hold any murderous urges for two weeks until we're done? Although it might be closer to three if the discussion goes like I think it will." The look she's giving him is so uncomfortably probing that he sets the book down and turns toward the kitchen. He tosses a vague glance across the space at her, not even making true eye contact as he makes a lame quip about all secret plotting meetings, but especially the early morning ones, needing coffee.

And so she sits at his kitchen table and they drink coffee and Veronica tells him about her stakeout last night.

She starts off with background, informing him that the police told her about a man named Danny Caldwell who has had several moving violations in the area of the school.

"I looked into him," she says, wrapping her hands around her mug. "Almost forty, no kids in the school, not a past student. Cops have him down as "belligerent," because he refused to explain what he was doing there. Nothing odd at his place last night- guy lives with his mom- but I'll keep watching."

Even Logan can tell that strange things are afoot with this guy, so he smiles and nods and congratulates her on her excellent sleuthing. There's a bit of residual nervousness about her watching potential child murderers alone at night, but this guy sounds like he's not all there and Veronica has probably mastered six kinds of martial arts in the decade since college, so she can handle it, and it's not his job to worry about her, if it ever was. Still, he has a question about all of this and as she gets up and starts to roam around his apartment, he can't help but ask it aloud.

"Top notch work on the case, Agent M, but why are you here at six AM? My position in the operation doesn't make me the fountain of information about the creepy characters you dig up. A text four hours from now would have been the same."

"Couldn't sleep," she says briskly, rifling through magazines as he watches, a little dumbfounded at the way she seems to think nothing of asserting herself into his life. "And I figured I would give you a heads up about this guy so you can ask around, see if there are any connections between Caldwell and the school that aren't in official record. Who's this?" She has a picture of him and Jack at a Senators game.

"That's Jack. I met him when I first moved to DC." And then, because he's done trying to impress Veronica Mars, because he's going to live his life and if she's happy about the way he does that than it's just lucky for her, "He's my sponsor."

"AA?" she asks, and Logan can't figure out whether to be pissed off about the question, like he has so many bad habits she can't decide which one he is trying to deal with, or her tone, so deliberately casual like she's trying to make him feel that it doesn't matter to her. He's gone through a few therapists so he can find one who doesn't make him feel like he's being smothered by their "safe space," and he doesn't need that feeling in his apartment.

Still, he takes a deep breath, because Jen, his current therapist, has been really good with him, and tells her that he stumbled into an AA meeting when he arrived in the city and eventually happened to be paired with Jack. "Started off as just calls when I needed someone to remind me that drinking myself to death would not be ideal, but then we actually became friends. He's always there when I need him and when he calls me on my shit, I know he's being serious."

Veronica sets the picture down and looks delighted. "You have a Wallace!" and when Logan considers it, he kind of does. Taller and definitely pushier, with an AA chip of his own, but the dependability and the sense that even with the stuff Logan knows about him, he's somehow above it…there's the Wallace part.

It seems only polite to ask about Wallace, who Logan didn't keep up with even though after Veronica left the two of them could have become friends, and then Mac. It's been a while since he's been close enough to observe her body language, but Logan can tell by the way Veronica twists her words that she's not in regular contact with either of them, that she's stretching and filling in the gaps with old information or guesswork. It's something he's going to have to talk to Jen about, this way that he feels that Veronica is somehow too good for him, despite all the flaws that he knows she has, and the swooping sense of victory when those flaws are further proven. But he keeps up with this polite acquaintance façade they've been playing with, doesn't point out her failures in career over old friendships and before he knows it it's eight AM. She checks her watch and says it's time for some sleep and he teases her about becoming nocturnal as he shows her to the door.

"Hey," Veronica says as he prepares to swing it shut behind her. "Thanks for telling me about Jack. I know that…Thanks."

He says "Sure," closes the door, gets ready to take a shower, but he doesn't want to admit that it was hard for him give her that. Information was always leverage to Veronica and while he doesn't know if the rules are the same, he's afraid that they are. That's why he didn't tell her the rest.

That he had showed up for junior year and believed that she would be there, back from her second summer of junior FBI boot camp or whatever the hell she did. They had been stumbling back toward each other for the whole year and he was sure that it would finally happen, that it would be their time. She had one thing that she was doing that she wouldn't tell him about, but he had been willing to have the patience to wait her out. But then she hadn't showed up for school. Her cell had been out of service and when he went to see her father, Keith had told him that Veronica had transferred to somewhere on the east coast and had even spun some semi-convincing story about her changing cell phones because there was a cheaper plan.

"I'll get you her new number," Keith had promised, but Logan could see the slump of his shoulders as the door closed and had been struck by the alarming realization that Keith Mars did not know where his daughter was.

He had dealt with her absence the whole year, attending his classes, making a few friends and decent grades. He had stopped spending so much money, had moved out of the Grande into a nice apartment near the beach and had tried to be better because he had always felt like the screw-up when it came to her. She had always seen the nasty underbelly to his humor, cocky attitude, and excessive lifestyle. He had convinced himself that if he did well this year on his own, when she came back for the summer, she would see that he had changed and they would be inevitable.

But she hadn't come back for the summer and if her father or her handful of friends knew where she was, they had all become excellent liars. Logan had never realized how long college summers were until he needed to surf or play video games or get ice cream enough to fill the endless days.

And then in August, Dick Senior had used his pull to get a private cell rather than a day with his son and Dick Junior had killed himself. Logan found him in the living room with booze and pills and called an ambulance right away, but the paramedics said it had been hours already.

All through the funeral, the one Logan had arranged through a combination of guessing and random pointing to the pages of funeral home samples because Dick hadn't been thoughtful enough to leave a will, Logan expected Veronica to show up because he was sure that she was keeping tabs on everyone in her creepily endearing way. He had stayed after everyone left, standing alone by the graveside, knowing that she would come up and slip her hand into his and let him lean on her. It might not last, but he had needed that strength.

But he had stayed until dark and she hadn't showed up and he had gotten trashed for three days straight and decided that taking a road trip was a good idea. He still wasn't entirely sure how he had managed to make the drive; he remembers little of it but waking up in random spots along the side of the road and a startling variety of venues dispensing alcohol. There was no hangover the entire way. He had called Hearst from Ohio and told them that he was taking the year off, and had laughed until he choked when they wished him a good journey.

He ended up at the church because even the sight of his credit card hadn't convinced the hotel he tried to stay at that he was a reliable customer and he physically couldn't drive anymore. And when he was awoken at eight in the morning, it was by the early AA meeting, the members of which weren't judgmental or pitying when he sat up from the pew where he was lying to yell at them to keep it down. They had given him a cup of pretty crappy coffee and mostly ignored him while they told stories that, if he was comparing, were often worse than his. He had been sober enough then to get a hotel room, had slept hard before waking up and observing that he was in Washington and it was seven in the morning, and there was enough time to go back to the church to see if there was another meeting.

He didn't tell Veronica that that's how it had started, with a comparison of pain, that there was no remorse at first. He was still going out and getting smashed, but he had switched to late afternoon drinking so he could get up early in the morning and hear the stories of other people's pain that made his own feel small. He has since figured out that this was pretty messed up, but at the time it was a lifeline. And eventually he had picked himself up and decided that if these people, who should have been so broken, could start to fix themselves, then so should he. He wasn't a devotee, mostly instead using the people there as a crutch and a marker by which he could measure how screwed up he was. He had done research and found out about the AA failure rates. He attended meetings with many kind people and many people who were pushy, who nagged at him to work the program harder, to consult AA resources more frequently, to pick a sponsor already.

Jack had switched jobs midway through Logan's second month attending meetings which meant that he had started becoming a regular in the mornings. Logan hadn't liked him. He could charm some of the people, could roll his eyes and blow others off with a witty comment, but Jack didn't stand for that. As Logan was leaving one Tuesday morning, Jack came up to him.

"I see what you're doing," he had said, the first words he had spoken personally to Logan, "And I think you need to stop coming if you're going to keep taking without giving any of yourself back."

Logan had scowled and shoved the heavy hand off of his shoulder and ten days later asked Jack to be his sponsor. Jack said no, that he was probation officer who dealt with punk kids all day and didn't need one calling him when all he wanted to do was go to the gym or make dinner. Logan asked him every couple of weeks, staggering it so he seemed like less of a stalker, until finally Jack had caved.

Getting Jack to give in had taken up so much of Logan's energy that he had put it slightly out of his mind that he was actually going to stop drinking. He was glad, for once, that there weren't people in his life, because it meant that he was mostly irritable to the barrista at Starbucks or random people on the Metro rather than anyone of lasting importance. He started biting his nails again.

"When I tell myself I don't need it," he told Jack, "I'm absolutely lying. I do need it and I don't want to feel this."

But he pushed through, started sharing a little at meetings. Eventually Jack asked him what he did during the day.

"Well, I'm almost done with all the possible tours of DC. Nice that I ended up in a city where there are a lot. Avoided the FBI one, though; I'm not sure I could get in. And if I'm not on a watchlist already, I don't plan on presenting myself to them." (His low-tech flight from Neptune had meant that he had unintentionally fallen off the grid. The east coast either didn't recognize him or didn't care, so unless he ran into someone from Entertainment Tonight or The View, he felt pretty anonymous.)

"Kid," Jack told him firmly, "You need a job."

That had seemed too daunting. "Can we start with something smaller? Like making a Star Wars reboot that doesn't suck."

"Fine." Jack had taken a bite of his burger. A slip of tomato dropped out of the side. Logan still found him pretty intimidating. "Go into therapy and go back to school." He swiped his napkin around his mouth. "You asked me to be your sponsor, and this is how I do it."

Hearst transferred his credits to Wilson, a similar small liberal arts college thirty minutes outside the city. They were sorry to see his checkbook go, but didn't give him much hassle about it. He had a service pack and ship his stuff, sold his place through an agent and moved into a condo.

He had declared an English major back at Hearst because the deadline was coming up and it seemed versatile and he hadn't known what to choose instead. Plus he could BS his way through a paper pretty well. He continued pursuing the degree, sitting in the middle-back of small discussions about Jane Austen and Walden and even raising a point every so often, but he didn't know where it was taking him.

"Therapy," Jack grunted as he punched a hard pitch to the back of the batting cage. "It'll help you sort out all the shit in your head. Isn't everyone in therapy back in Hollywood?"

Logan had slapped a helmet on for his turn. "Yeah, but that's not who I'm looking to emulate." But he had started searching for therapists anyway.

It took him until the winter of that senior year to find Jen. This was after the guy who would nod through whatever tidbit Logan felt comfortable sharing with that knob, squint and say, "I've often felt similar" or "That reminds me of when" and take up ten minutes with his own life story, and the woman who was so quiet that feelings and memories would pour out of Logan just to fill the silence but whose sessions left him exposed without any way of dealing with everything he had just unearthed. Jen had been mentioned by the chatty Psych major who sat behind him in his American Poetics course ("I worked in her office last semester, mostly just clerical stuff, but the people who came out of her office had had their lives _changed_ , I swear…") and he figured he might as well try her out because the other option was to continue running down the list he had gotten from Google, and the worst she could be was a different kind of crazy.

Logan still didn't know what Jen did that changed her other clients' lives, but she worked for him. She was a non-judgmental listener who offered constructive questions and suggestions for his issues, and if he tried to quip his way out, she could dish right back and she kept pressing until he was honest, about his father or Veronica, his mother or how he still needed to deal with parts of his relationship with Lilly.

She was the one who he asked about changing his name.

"Every time I hear it, I'm reminded of what I never want to be."

She tilted her head. "Do you feel like you need the reminder?"

"No," he had said vehemently. She lifted a brow, almost seeming taken aback for the first time. "If anything I need reminding to be someone different."

"Roots are important," she had said, seeming almost casual about it, as if she was pointing out something in conversation with a friend. So he had chosen Lester, to remind him of his mother.

Eventually he had gotten around to the reason he had come in the first place her and asked what to do about the future.

"What do you want to do?" she had asked, pushing her glasses up onto her head.

"I'm independently wealthy, so I don't have to do anything."

"Yes, but what do you want to do?"

Logan had tipped his head back. "When I picture myself in the future, I'm, you know, happy and I've got a house and friends and sometimes a wife and kids, but I'm still not clear on what I do during the day."

"What scares you the most?" she had asked, and he had thought it one of her unannounced subject changes.

"Kids," he had answered, surprised even as the word came out of his mouth.

Jen has nodded. "Do something with that, then. Use your work to face your fear."

"Like teach?" His tone was incredulous. "That seems like a huge mistake. I mean, I'm afraid of kids because when I am in my body, going to class or eating pizza or whatever, I feel like a normal guy. But I know that the anger is in there somewhere, and I can't trust myself to be normal guy around kids. There were some screwed up teachers in my high school. I don't want to be the sequel to that movie."

"I think you're wrong, but what's more important is that you think you're right." Their time was up. She stood. "We can work on anger stuff. Apply to schools. And if you're really not meant to do that, we can keep looking around. You'll still be independently wealthy."

Jack was the only one who came to his graduation from Wilson, slipping in halfway through the seemingly endless ceremony and taking Logan out to a deli afterward. Most of the time he gave Logan a lot of crap, but he knew without asking that he didn't have anyone and he had stepped up so Logan wouldn't take off his cap and gown among the sea of families and go home to toss his diploma in a corner.

"I love seeing people's faces when we're together," Logan said, stuffing pastrami into his mouth. "I can't get enough of that indecision when they see a young white guy and a- what are you, fifty?"

"Forty-six."

"Whatever, this older Asian dude. You can see their brains going 'Father-son? Did his mom cheat? Is he adopted? Where does the guilt go if he is: the orphan or the disadvantaged minority guy?' And that's before they even think you might be my sugar daddy or something."

Jack had laughed, because he was low-key like that, and grabbed a fry. "Please, if anything you're the minority. Thankfully we have a shortage of obnoxious smartasses in the world. Anyway, they probably think I'm doing charity work with the mentally ill. Maybe there's no guilt, but I come out looking pretty awesome."

"Unless they settle on the sugar daddy thing."

"Hey, you know that if I was your real dad, I'd be proud of you, right?" Jack said it casually around a chunk of potato and grease, or Logan wouldn't have accepted it.

It was that moment that he clung to when he looked over at Jack running beside him and told him that he couldn't work the program anymore.

"I mean, I'm not going to start drinking again, I'm still going to see Jen, but the twelve stepping and giving yourself to a higher power…that shit doesn't work for me, Jack. I don't know why I thought it would." They had to stop and sit down on a set of steps because Logan was breaking down a bit, gesturing excessively and staring at nothing when staring at Jack got to be too much. "And I know that I asked you to be my sponsor, but please don't give up on me, man. I can't-"

"Shut up, kid," Jack finally interrupted. "I'd be a pretty crap sponsor if I didn't realize that it wasn't your thing. I know that this doesn't work for everyone. I'm not going to give up on you. Calm down. You can still call me. Just less in the middle of the night, you little shit. If you're having a problem, fine, but no more of this slumber party, 'Jack I can't sleep' bull." He had slapped Logan on the shoulder, standing up. "Come on, you know I hate not finishing a run."

Thinking about all the things he had actually avoided telling Veronica, Logan felt that he had held up fairly well. He still called Jen's office after his shower and left a message asking if she could squeeze him in Monday evening. He had stopped going to daily or even weekly therapy, but he thought that he might need it now. Veronica might solve the case and leave before the end of the week, but she had already stirred some things that Logan needed to talk about. He had come too far to have it all ruined by Veronica Mars. 


	4. Chapter 4

But something more pressing than thoughts of Veronica overtook his mind on Monday. As he drove to school, even the normally smooth, neutral tone of the newscaster over the radio was clearly trying to contain distress.

"Police this morning have announced the murder of another child in Anacostia. The body was discovered after midnight by an unofficial neighborhood watch member who heard shots near 16th Street and Minnesota Avenue. The name of the child has not been released. Police have no suspects at present in this, the fifth of what now appears to be a series of murders."

"Damn it!" Logan barked, smacking the wheel of his car so that it swerved slightly. He straightened out and tried to calm himself, but he couldn't forget it, and as he got to school it became clear that he wasn't alone. No one else was berating themselves about sitting around moaning over their long-ago girlfriends instead of trying to help solve these murders because no one else had the opportunity. He was the one in a position to help and he was squandering it.

But despite their lack of actual potential to assist, it was clear that they were all restless to do something. Dr. Curtis gathered the teachers who had arrived early enough. Logan looked around at the other faces, analyzing reactions as the principal announced an assembly, but everyone seemed suitably chagrined. Mr. Babish even offered to read a short prayer, but was politely turned down. Although most of the students were some denomination of Christian, the principal insisted on a strict non-religious policy from the school leadership. Logan stood in the back of the auditorium, arms crossed, as Dr. Curtis told the students that the anger and fear and uselessness they were feeling was natural. He said that they each needed to focus on their jobs, which was learning or teaching so that there could be more educated, successful people in the world. He said that the police were working to help.

"Yeah, I can tell they're really being a goddamn help," Santiago Lima said in Logan's class before lunch. He probably didn't realize that he was echoing almost precisely the words of the kids in the earlier classes. It didn't matter because the emotion in his voice was real, disgust and anger, with fear in his eyes. It wasn't that they were scared for themselves, that the killer would suddenly decide that older kids were better targets. Nearly everyone had a little brother or niece or cousin living nearby. "I can see more cops on the streets to protect the kids, and they've definitely been making arrests, trying to find this son of a-"

"Enough," Logan said, voice firm. The progress in the case was not measurable, especially to them, but Veronica Mars had been in his kitchen at 6 AM running on coffee and determination. "I know that this isn't something you believe a lot around here, but I think that the police are actually trying their hardest. Now get out your books and someone talk to me about Holden Caulfield."

They did manage to have a short discussion about Catcher's narrative style and Holden's likability, but it was like trying to pull prey back out of a snake and Logan was relieved when the bell rang. This case, these kids, was bringing up issues that the students could feel in the air although they might not know the history behind them. They knew that they could be attending schools like the ones they saw on tv, that there were neighborhoods where being shot would be a shock and an outrage. Instead they were stuck here, where growing up happened quickly if it happened at all, where small bodies kept turning up, and where they weren't sure the police were invested or trustable.

By his last period class, the rage had come back to a simmer. They were reading Invisible Man, so there was some pointed commentary, but few outbursts. Still, Logan knew it was not over. It might wait until the next body, if Veronica allowed there to be one, or it might take something smaller to bring it out, but a debate had been started that couldn't be tucked away anymore.

Logan plugged his phone into the car speakers for the drive to Jen's office. He didn't want to turn on the radio. Stuck at a light, he debated what to tell her about the case and Veronica and their involvement. His instinct was to tell her everything, but he wasn't sure that revealing case details and having him keeping a lookout in the high school was entirely legal and he didn't want to get Veronica in trouble. He was pretty sure the information he had on the case was in files marked with "Confidential" in big letters, and no matter how he trusted Jen with his own life, he couldn't let her have these.

Still, it was soothing telling her about Veronica coming back into town for work and starting to hang around.

"I've done pretty well," he said. "I'm happy most of the time. But then she shows up and it's like I've just been burying everything. I remember all the horrible things I did, and I know how quickly that can all come back. I could be that person so easily. There's really nothing standing in my way."

"Well," Jen started, uncrossing her legs. "You're standing in your way. You're obviously entitled to feel however you feel, you know there's nothing I or anyone can do about that. But just because Veronica reminds you of a past that you cannot help, it doesn't mean that you give in to it." She noticed that Logan had on his mulling face, the one he would get that was done talking about something and just wanted to think it over by himself. She would let him for now, but made a note to bring it up next time. "But you were mad when you came in tonight. Why?"

He ran a hand over his face. It would be hard to tell her about his helplessness while stepping around his role in the murder investigation, and he didn't like to lie to Jen so he came straight out with it. "I can't tell you everything, just that I was asked to…help with some details of what's happening with the Anacostia murders. And I haven't really done anything."

"Is there anything that you really could do?"

"I was asked to be looking around and I've done that, but I haven't seen anything." He noticed that his leg was bouncing. He didn't stop it. "I want to be doing something more aggressive."

Jen's tone was mild, neither steely nor gentle. "There's a difference between wanting to do something more and having failed in accomplishing something you were supposed to."

They talked for another half hour or so about the current atmosphere, the way it was bringing up thoughts from Neptune and affecting his classes. Logan's cell vibrated against his thigh. He looked over Jen's shoulder at the clock and noticed that it was time to go.

"This was good. Call if you need to talk some more." Jen stood, straightening herself to finish off her day. She was so organized in her thoughts, so professionally smooth that Logan sometimes forgot what a mess her desk was. It took ages for her to straighten everything to go home.

"I will. Say hi to Callie for me." Logan and Jen didn't have a closer relationship than normal for a therapist and patient, but it had been ten years. He knew a few details of her personal life, and he was frequently the last appointment of the day so sometimes he ran into Jen's daughter, Callie, as he was heading out and she was heading in to pick up Jen.

Callie wasn't outside today, so Logan just tossed a vague smile at the receptionist and went down to his car. As he reached into his pocket for the keys, he found his cell phone there as well and remembered the earlier vibration. Sliding into the driver's seat, he pulled it out. He paused, resting his hands on the steering wheel and breathing in, when he saw that the text was from Veronica.

_Case updates. Meet in 10?_

He told her he was fifteen minutes away from his apartment.

 _Need to grab dinner anyway. Can you make it here?_ She included an address. He didn't know the restaurant, but it would only take him twenty minutes or so to get there.

_See you soon._

Thirty five minutes later, Logan had parked his car and found Veronica leaning against the side of the restaurant, around the corner from the entrance. One foot was propped on the wall behind her as she scrolled through her phone. Her hair was golden in the light, tightened up in a ponytail, and his breath caught just a little. He forced himself to release it, to walk up casually, although he didn't know what he was going to do when he got to her. They knew each other too well for handshakes and had been separated too long for hugs and cheek-kisses. He slipped on his sunglasses to match hers.

"Mars."

"Oh good, you're here." She tucked her phone away and started walking toward the restaurant. She didn't look put-off by his lateness, but she didn't seem to have time for politeness. Logan had forgotten how she took charge so quickly. He didn't quite know whether or not he liked it. "Have you ever had Ethiopian food?"

He let his hands slide into his pockets. He had been cool in high school, he remembered that. Why were his palms sweating as he chanted _Keep it casual_ over and over in his head? "You have picked a cuisine that my intercontinental taste buds have not yet experienced."

"I just tried it for the first time a few weeks ago when I was in San Francisco. A couple of friends took me out. It's messy and spicy, but they used to work in DC and they told me that there were a bunch of great places to try here."

The restaurant had a bright green sign over the doorway; inside it was small and crowded.

"What for you?" the guy behind the counter urged pleasantly.

Logan let Veronica order, which she did comfortably and at length, and they split the bill, not without a little awkwardness. They took the heavy bags to go, perching on odd stone benches near the place. There were a couple of stews, one with vegetables and one with chicken, a sautéed meat thing, some greens, something that was probably potatoes, and Logan unwrapped a bunch of flat, porous breads. They were thicker than tortillas, or even pita.

Veronica placed the containers between them before helping herself to one of the doughy rounds. "Injera," she told him, and, ripping off a piece, dipped it into the one of the stews.

"This is why no utensils," Logan commented, feeling a little slow. He waited for Veronica to make a poor little rich boy remark, but she was too busy trying something else. He shrugged and tore off a healthy piece of his own, folding it slightly so he didn't embarrass himself by dripping bits of food down his shirt. Some sauce slid down his finger anyway. She was right about it being spicy, but it was good. He licked the sauce off, took a swig of the mango juice he had gotten and dived back in.

"Sorry," Veronica said after a few minutes. Her voice still sounded a little clogged as she swallowed. "I haven't had anything all day. Should have told you to fast too."

He shrugged. "I'll always be a growing boy."

"I just blame it on a tapeworm at this point," she sighed.

He grabbed a potato between two fingers; he had given up on coming out of the meal clean. "So, what's the case thing?"

"You must have heard-"

"Course." His stomach rolled slightly, remembering the rest of the day outside of this moment. Even as he savored the last bite, he wasn't sure that eating had been the best activity to accompany their meeting.

"Couldn't have been Caldwell," Veronica said, shaking her head. "I was at his place all night, and he didn't leave." She scooped up greens a little violently. Some slid over the side, leaving a greasy, sluggish trail on the plastic container. "I was sure he was involved, but it was just a waste of time, and this sicko got another kid. Damn. _Damn_." She seemed to be reacting to the situation only now.

Logan leaned back. "You sure he didn't leave? No other entrances he could have snuck out of?"

Her look clearly communicated that she had already considered these possibilities, but she humored him. "Unless he can turn into a seventy-year-old lady, he was home all night." He gave her a questioning look. "His mom went out to walk the dog at one point."

"What about accomplices?"

"We're looking," she said, but she didn't sound optimistic. "At this point we're looking at everything. I wanted to ask you if you had found anything. Because I swear, Logan, this guy's a ghost. We don't have enough cops to cover every alley on the city. Not enough of the surrounding buildings have security cameras, so all of that CSI stuff is gone. Either no one saw anything, or no one will admit to have seen anything. This case is a maze made up of only dead ends."

The words burned, but Logan gave them to her anyway. "I don't know anything. My kids are more riled up than usual, but it's all about this. They're crazed over it all. Keep saying if it was happening in Chevy Chase, this guy would have already been caught and fried." He had defended her earlier, but that didn't mean that he didn't have his own questions. He knew that there were plenty of kids in Neptune who Lamb had written off as not worth looking for because they lived in the wrong zip code.

"It's not bias. I've been in the station all day and the cops are as riled as anyone. It's just that there aren't any clues. No hair or fibers at the scene, or too many to catalog. Generic, unregistered guns. No motives or connections from the family side, and we've done deep background checks. No camera footage."

"If Big Brother is always watching," Logan said, anger white-hot in words tired around the edges, "Where the hell is he?"

"I don't know," she said. She had stopped eating, and her voice was all exhaustion.

He felt bad, suddenly, and wanted to put an arm around her, but he resisted. "I know you're trying..."

"I just don't know if it will be enough," she voiced for him, and there was a crumbling around her that he didn't know that he had ever seen. He silently helped her pack up the food, and she forced a couple of the dishes on him as they walked back to where he had parked.

"Do you need a ride?" he asked, although he wasn't sure that he could take more Veronica Mars at this moment. It was too confusing being around her, the past and current anger mixing maddeningly with pity and the desire to comfort her.

"I'll catch a cab," she said. They were looking at each other over the hood of Logan's car. "Make sure to call me with anything, even if it seems small. You've got my number now."

"A privilege I will surely never abuse," he said, and gained a small smile from her before she waved him off.

Hours later, in the darkness, Logan firmed up his position on Veronica, although he was sure that the next time he saw her, he would just feel aching and tangled no matter what his previously clear-cut resolution.

"You can help her. It's important to help her, and you'll be more aggressive from now on. You'll ask kids if they saw anything suspicious. But we're not going to be friends. No more dinner meet-ups or whatever." And he rolled over to go to sleep, ignoring the fact that going to watch her eat finger food was the best decision he had made all day.

But Veronica had an impeccable way of making people turn very quickly from liking or at least tolerating her. When Logan woke up the next morning, he had a text.

_What do you know about Steven Curtis?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not hard when I don't get a lot of comments in general, but I've been really happy about the amount of feedback on this. It really makes me think about my portrayals of Logan and Veronica, and about building my OCs. Truth moment: I'm probably not going to change anything in my plot, but I've tweaked a couple of things based on these comments. Anyway, keep it coming. It truly makes my day!


	5. Chapter 5

"No," Logan told Veronica slightly later that morning. He needed to stop talking to her while he was in the car. He ended up with too much nervous energy and nowhere to spend it. He hit his head lightly against the steering wheel and begged the traffic to start moving.

"Logan-"

"No. It's not him. Not a chance. You haven't seen him stay three hours after the last bell tutoring. He helps the janitors clean up. He puts everything into this school. It's not him."

Veronica sighed. He wondered if she had gotten been to bed since he had seen her last night. He suspected that she hadn't slept yet. "I'm still in the info-gathering stage, but there's some pretty compelling evidence. I'll tell you more once I have everything, but for now could you just take me at my word and poke around a little?"

Logan wanted to say no, wanted to be sure, to draw the line this far. But then he remembered Duncan and Beaver and Mercer, people who he had written off in his mind as innocent, who he had liked and laughed with. "Yeah. Fine. I'll do my best My Little Detective impersonation."

"I wouldn't expect any-" But he shut off his phone and tossed it beside him, not in the mood for banter.

He tried to get back in the spirit as the kids came in. Years ago, he had bought Jen a gift, a plant that still flourished on her window sill, to thank her for getting him into the classroom. He loved the job despite all the fears and memories that should have made it torture. There was such a demonstrativeness of emotion, a palpable feeling of being liked and effective. But his true love was the purity of it. He got back what he put in, and that was incredibly appealing for someone whose relationships were stained by abrupt tonal shifts that he had given up trying to understand.

So knowing that if he was short with them, the mood would merely be reflected toward him, he tried to keep his behavior normal. He leaned against his desk and led discussions, aiming for his casual comfort zone, his usual rapport with students calmed slightly from the knife-edge of yesterday. He supervised an in-class writing assignment, and graded it while he proctored a test. He had an open door hour at the end of the day, and he pushed through it, trying not to show how much he wanted to go home because he always wanted to give them his last scraping of energy. If someone was going to go home to find that the power had been shut off, they deserved fifteen minutes arguing with him about whether Hamlet was overrated.

He gave fifteen minutes, too, to Mrs. Krazny because she always seemed so lonely. Fifteen minutes of pictures- actual snapshots, like he hadn't seen in years- of her new, hideous dog, some kind of stupid mixed breed that was probably supposed to be classy and ideal, but just looked deranged. Finally he cut her off as gently as he could and went to stop by the principal's office on the way out.

"Hey, Dr. C," he said, poking his head around the doorway. "Can I have a minute?"

Dr. Curtis was typing. He brought his head up for a moment so the light glinted off of his glasses as he gestured for Logan to come in.

Logan sat, looking around the office for anything Veronica might want to know about. He had a minute to glance at the simply framed diplomas and posters while Dr. Curtis finished. As the principal stopped typing, he leaned back and looked at Logan seriously. "What can I do for you?"

As he said it, Logan froze. Veronica had told him to "poke around" but she had probably assumed that he would think through his poking. Or she had forgotten that not everyone could improvise or rely on their blond adorableness to get them out of sticky situations.

"I wanted to talk to you about class reaction to the- to what's been going on," Logan said, hoping that the pause hadn't been for as awkwardly long a time in reality as it had in his head.

Sighing, Dr. Curtis took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I'm glad someone wants to talk about this. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday, but I'm sure you've noticed that the tension has been fierce. Luckily, I've been speaking with the city and they've assigned grief counselors who will be here starting on Thursday. We'll have mandatory sessions for each student to eliminate the stigma of making an appointment."

"You might want to check your math," Logan said, keeping his tone friendly. "It will take weeks to work through all the students if they're each getting an appointment."

Dr. Curtis said firmly, "I know. But I'm in a position of advantage with the District right now, and I can push that to keep the team here for that time. I want each child to have the opportunity to speak to a professional, about this or about their home life. I'm sure that you are aware of some students who could benefit from this."

"Of course," Logan said. It was true. There were kids in his classes who made him grateful for the way that he grew up. He wished there were services which would do adequate follow-ups if he reported to them, but knew that these kids would just slip through the cracks or get shoved into a broken foster care system. "Um, thanks for talking to me."

"Absolutely." Dr. Curtis slid his glasses back on. "I'm glad to see someone is concerned about how the students are handling this…" he paused, a little oddly, especially for such a purposeful man, "tragedy."

"No problem." On his way out Logan looked around once more. There was little to see, and none of it was a signed confession or a smoking gun. But as his eyes passed over the cabinet that held the confidential student records, he thought that those might be worth mentioning.

Sliding into his car, he closed his eyes and collapsed a bit against the headrest. He didn't know how any crimes got solved. This one situation- the child murders, the unrest at school- added to Veronica's return, and the guilt that came from feeling like those problems were equitable was wearing him down in a way that long days grading papers and staying late never had. Years in DC had softened the elements that had been hardened by growing up in Neptune, with his dad and his mom and Lilly's murder. As much as he tried to get it back, his armor of disinterest and sarcasm had been peeled away and exposed too much of the gentle, wanting part of himself that he had always tried to keep covered.

All he wanted to do was go home and pass out. But his cell beeped a text and as he opened it, he remembered that he needed to keep the good face on for just a little longer.

It was five when he opened the door to see Veronica. She opened her mouth, no doubt to steamroll over his objections about inviting her in and allowing her to convince him about Dr. Curtis's guilt, but he steamrolled first.

"Hey, I wasn't expecting you. If I had known, we'd have made more." He tried to convey with emphasis and significant glances that anything confidential should be saved for later, and she seemed to get the hint.

"Who's here?" came the call from the kitchen.

He shouted back, "Just an old friend," and tried to indicate that Veronica should leave. She looked a little dazed and frozen as she turned, but she didn't leave fast enough.

"We've got plenty," Lisa offered, drying her hands as she came towards them. She flipped the towel over her shoulder and edged around Logan so she could extend a hand to Veronica. "I'm Lisa. I hope you like fettuccine."

Veronica shook, a little cautious, but then determined. "Veronica. I like everything."

Lisa set Veronica up with a glass of wine, which she sipped slowly after a glance at Logan to make sure it was okay. He appreciated the consideration, but had to hold in an eye roll. The tension here was minimal; it might be awkward, but the situation was not going to make him sneak off to the bathroom for nips of scotch.

"How do you know Logan?" Lisa asked cheerfully, draining the pasta and glancing toward where Veronica stood leaning against the counter.

"Oh, we knew each other in high school," Veronica said casually. Logan noticed that she was drinking in such a way that it looked like she was ingesting more than she actually was. "Occasionally ran in the same circles."

"You were doing charity with the book nerds, then?" Lisa gently teased. Then to Logan, "Lo, can you get the sauce? I don't want it to simmer over."

"Got it," Logan said automatically. But he did an inner double take. She called him Lo, it was just her nickname for him, he remembered that, but couldn't grasp the details of when it had started. How long it had been, if she had asked permission, how he had felt the first time he heard it. He saw, too, Veronica's face spasm from that familiarity. He ignored it and went to snap off the burner.

"So, how did you meet?" Veronica asked, face calm now and voice sweet once Lisa had dished out the food and made sure everyone had all the forks and bread that they needed.

"Mutual friend," Logan said around a mouthful of food. He took a moment to swallow, hoping that Lisa would use the pause to give details, because the truth was that he couldn't quite remember how Mr. Ducote from school was related to her. She was his niece or his neighbor or maybe his granddaughter… He tried not to remember that he still knew the score of that first soccer game where he had met Veronica.

"My godfather, Martin, teaches with Logan," Lisa put in neatly, and Logan added, "Our master of all things physics." Lisa smiled at him. Veronica took another piece of bread. "Martin kept going on about Logan and how he energizes the kids and is so dedicated and funny, and finally I told him that he needed to just stop talking and introduce us."

Veronica nodded, smiling politely. "And what do you do?" she asked, and Logan could tell that she was resisting using her brittle, pointed tone.

"I'm a vet. Not quite the same as kids, but it's all about the caring instinct, you know," Lisa said, nodding along with the words. It was something that Logan had seen people do, although he didn't understand why they would. Were they trying to confirm that they weren't lying? "What do you do?"

Logan caught her eye, twitched his mouth a tiny bit. It wasn't that Lisa wasn't trustworthy, it was just that Veronica's business should stay need to know only. "I'm a photographer," Veronica replied promptly, understanding his message.

"That's nice. People or scenery? Because I've heard that shooting people can be hard," Lisa said, tilting her head a little, sympathetic.

"Both." Veronica leaned forward, licking a little sauce off of her finger. "Although I do prefer people."

And so followed a half hour of boring, half-false small talk. Veronica lied perfectly, which was slightly unsettling for Logan. She made up a whole new life on the spot and even though he had seen her in different wigs, with different voices and different names when she had worked undercover as a teenager, seeing her answer Lisa's questions as if the Veronica he knew was false reminded him that perhaps he trusted her too much.

As he cleared the table, Logan tried to figure out how to get Lisa to leave so he could get the latest case details from Veronica. Fortunately, Lisa came over with her purse and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thanks for dinner, and I really am sorry that I have to cut this short, but I have an early day tomorrow."

Some buried good-guy instinct kicked in, and Logan was able to remember to wish her luck with her new student assistant.

"Thanks," she beamed. "It was nice to meet you, Veronica. I'll see you another time, Lo." She kissed his cheek again and let herself out.

Veronica helped Logan take the dishes in, loading the dishwasher while he put the leftovers into containers. He gestured silently toward the coffee pot and she nodded, so he poured a healthy amount into a Wilson mug and handed it to her. They went to sit in the living area. He sat on the armchair, leaned his forearms on his knees, facing her on the couch.

"What did you find?" he asked, as if that was the only reason she was there. _It is definitely the only reason she could be here_ he reminded, and resigned himself to listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of positive feedback again, which I love to an unspeakable degree. Thanks so much, everyone! This one was a little short, but the next one should be nice and long. And I hope you find something here to like anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

Veronica sipped thoroughly at her coffee and began. "I've been talking to some friends, some sources off the beaten path." Her bag had been leaning against the couch since she came in- he'd forgotten- but she leaned over to grab it, pulling out a thick file. "These are grant applications that Dr. Curtis has written in the past three years."

"He writes them himself, you know," Logan said. He was looking at the floor through his opened legs, so his voice was muffled. It stayed quiet even after he looked up. "I don't know how you can say he would do this when he uses his own time to write these. The private schools out there, they hire people whose only job is to send these out to get more money. Curtis is practically a volunteer. He'd never be the one to- He works too hard at trying to make the school good to ruin it."

"That's exactly why I think he's a good candidate," Veronica argued. "There are three here from the past few months, a federal department and two private organizations. These were all on their way to the shredder, they were rejected, when the murders start happening. Jackson is in the news, the committee deciding the grants remembers the application and suddenly they're back in contention. They're topical and they clearly need help."

Logan looked at her. Slowly he said, "So you think that Curtis is killing kids to bring publicity to what's happening in the neighborhood? You really think he wouldn't have just written a rallying op-ed for the Post?"

Veronica spread her hands. He couldn't get truly angry at her because he could see that she didn't want to believe it. She was following the evidence, but she wanted there to be something that she missed, something that was misleading her. "We both know how effective that would be. And there's one more thing." She riffled through the bag again- Logan was beginning to hate the bag- and came up with an envelope this time. She turned it over in her hands, seeming reluctant to give it to him. She narrated its contents instead. "When he was thirteen, Steven Curtis was convicted of battery of a seventeen-year-old thug named Maurice Willis. Willis was a drug dealer who was trying to recruit Curtis and his brothers, older and younger, to deal for him. Curtis put him in the hospital for two weeks and messed up his knees permanently. He pled no contest, was sentenced to thirty months, and only served half of it. He was probably the best inmate the warden ever came across. He didn't join a gang, he calmed tensions, he passed two years of high school while he was inside and he got out early because of good behavior and overcrowding."

"I don't understand," Logan said, leaning back, "How in your mind the fact that he beat up one scumbag thirty years ago translates to him killing babies now. I can point you to fifteen kids at the high school who smack people around on a weekly basis for no good reason; go after them, MacGruff."

Veronica's expression was at once firm and desperate. Logan wondered how hard it must be for her to convince people that she was serious, both because of her Tinkerbell looks and the way her answers always seemed so out of the blue and crazy even when she was right. "It's more than that. Look." She finally opened the envelope and took out a form. "When he was seventeen, Curtis petitioned to have his criminal record expunged. He wanted to go to college and work in schools and the odds were already against him without the conviction part. He was successful, and it was like the whole thing had never happened. All that stuff I told you, Willis and the jail time? That's sealed. It doesn't appear on most background checks."

"So you had to do the Veronica Mars special. Stop the back-patting and get to the point."

"Fine. I had to dig even deeper to get this, but the hearing that sealed the record was not his first. He went a year earlier also, but his petition was refused."

"Why?"

"They asked him if he felt remorse for what he had done and he told them," she looked at the sheet to read it, "'If I must protect the many vulnerable by bloodying my hands with one monster, than that is a price I will gladly pay.' His lawyer probably dropped dead from hearing that. It was not a winner. The judge at the second hearing didn't ask the question, the record was wiped and I haven't been able to find anything since, which is a pretty good indicator that there hasn't been anything."

Logan persisted. "But it's not monsters he would be killing now, Veronica. They're kids and I don't think he could justify it."

"I'm not a shrink, but the concept is pretty similar. Sacrificing a few to benefit the many? If he got this money, he could get more guidance counselors, library and computer resources, bring back regular art and music, fix the facilities… I've read his proposals. I believe you when you say that he's committed. But what if he's too committed? Did you find anything in his office?"

Logan shook his head. "Files for the kids. They've got birthdates and background, emergency contacts, stuff like that, but that's it. And even if they're being used for the murders, the place is not exactly Fort Knox. Security in that office would have sunk ships in World War II. Dr. C is in and out all the time, so teachers, students, even parents just walk in."

"It's our best lead," Veronica said, setting her cup on the side table. He could tell that she was just explaining things to him out of courtesy. Her mind was already made up. Indeed, "I'm going to do a stakeout tonight. Me, some Starbucks and a camera, catching the bad guy."

It was useless to try to convince her not to go after an imposingly built potential serial murderer. He would just have to hope that she had upgraded her utility belt to include more than a Taser and a head tilt. Logan shook his own head a little. "I guess that stuff you told Lisa wasn't all just your so-called life."

She froze a little, then went to return the papers to her bag. "Yeah, but criminals are better for the blood pressure than brats and bridezillas, so I think I probably made the right career choice." She seemed to busy herself extraneously, just for a moment before setting her bag aside. "So, Lisa… Is she…?"

"Complete sentences are easier to understand and recommended by grammarians."

"And English teachers, I guess," she commented lightly. "Is it serious between you and Lisa?"

"There isn't even really an 'it,'" Logan said, making sure to keep his tone slow and conversational. He tried to recall the time when he was wickedly cool rather than a nervous wreck in the face of Veronica Mars. "We go on a date every so often, but I wouldn't call her my girlfriend. Friends would pretty much cover it."

"So everything's fine without the benefits?" It was the way she said it that infuriated Logan. It wasn't sharp or accusatory. It wasn't falsely casual, but genuinely so, and the idea of her curiosity and automatically dim view of him made his insides snarl.

"Well, I have a hooker on call, so usually I can hold out, but I can always grab a random student if it gets to be too much," he ground out. He had mostly forgotten that he could be this upset. He had been passionate and angry and unsettled since leaving Neptune, but this particular brand of fury over being judged was exclusive to Veronica.

For once she looked taken aback. "I just meant that she seemed to want more than just friends." But Veronica Mars didn't stay startled and apologetic for long, and her tone quickly turned snappish. "It's all about the caring instinct? That means that she wants the two of you to be on a mission together, saving the world one needy kid at a time. Or ferret, or whatever."

Logan rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'd forgotten the joys of the Veronica Mars one-two punch: accusations and jealousy. Thought I'd dodged that bullet the day you pulled your great escape from Neptune, but it really is just typical that you've been lying in wait with the terrible sequel this whole time."

"My great escape?" Veronica said, crossing her arms. Logan found himself slightly bothered that she had managed to pick the words in the sentence that stemmed from hurt rather than anger. He didn't want her knowing him anymore. "Are you really still tearing your hair out about ten year old crap? Does this mean you're still up at night stewing about Barry Bonds taking steroids, and the end of the Harry Potter series?"

"Well, I thought Bush Two was the only thing from that period that really pissed me off, but I had clearly forgotten about the fun of abandonment by one of my best friends."

Her face softened until she looked nearly remorseful, and for one second, Logan imagined a timeline in which she apologized. I'm sorry, Logan, she would say, I didn't think that it would be so hurtful if I were to leave without mentioning that tiny fact to you. But then her body remembered that she was Veronica Mars. She straightened, and hardened all over. "I was doing stuff that you wouldn't have understood. I'm sorry that I didn't get to explain it to you, but maybe I would have. If you hadn't gotten into a snit and decided to rage against the Neptune machine, you would have been there when I got back and I would have been able to tell you."

"Not to be the twenty-first century Galileo, but the world doesn't revolve around you. Screw you for thinking that I should have just been waiting around for you to decide that I was worth your time, screw you for not even leaving a note to tell me that you were disappearing from everywhere I thought you would be, and screw you for thinking that everything I do is a reaction to you." He kept a straight face event though his gut was already clenching in a kind of rusty, panicked laughter. "Dick died, Veronica. Dick killed himself and I found him. That's why I left."

There was a slight, nasty victory in seeing her shame. "I heard about that. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," and his voice was bitter.

"But if you had just stayed until the end of that year," she went on, defensive and relentless, "I would have been back and I would have explained it to you. I was planning on explaining everything to you, if you had just stayed for a little longer."

Over two decades ago, Logan had rammed his small body into Trina's gut because she was yanking the fur of her cat. He had never hit a girl since, never really wanted to with the boiling anger that he felt before he got into a fight. But Veronica's infuriatingly incorrect focus on herself was starting to bring that fury to the fore. "You left first," he mumbled, voice low, and then louder, "You left first." The anger he had thought he had laid to rest with friends and a vocation and distance from Neptune rose inside of him. Every time he had turned down Jen's suggestion to search for Veronica, saying that he had closure just from talking it out in the safety of her office was revealing its total falsehood. His throat tightened and his muscles clenched, and somehow his voice still came out. "The hero is the one that stays, Veronica," he shouted. "You're the one who told me that, but you have never stayed! You left, just like every other goddamn person leaves." And then quieter, dead-stare and a little broken, "The hero is the one who stays."

Sophomore year of college, shortly after midterms, Logan got a call saying that a skull had been found and pieced together enough for facial recognition to confirm that it was his mother's. They had been trying to contact his mother's next of kin for six weeks, but because all of Aaron's information dead-ended (no pun intended) and Logan's had changed, there had been a lot of trouble. Had it not been Lynn's body, the office probably would have given up, but eventually they got through to Aaron's former agent who happened to have Logan's number.

Logan did a lot of screaming and bargaining in order to keep the find quiet. But it was worth it when he got to lay the remains (and they were literal remains, whatever fragments that had been found arranged in a coffin) of his mother respectfully to rest. It was only him and Dick, Keith and Veronica, and Trina, who showed up toward the end. She had managed to remain polite and even affectionate, perhaps reacting to Logan's clearly crumbling stability. Lynn probably would have wanted a slightly larger, fancier affair, but it was often said that the funeral was for the loved ones left behind and Logan wanted quiet and no fuss.

Because he didn't want to reveal his legitimate excuse to his professors in a bid for amnesty on assignments, Logan returned to classes the next day. He made it through the week with minimal apparent difficulty. But on Friday when he had failed to come pick Veronica up to see a movie they were both interested in, she showed up in his room. He was sitting with spread legs, staring straight ahead. A bottle of vodka sat in the semi-circle of his limbs, directly parallel to his knees, but he hadn't opened it. He didn't mention the movie, but he seemed to be expecting her even without looking up.

"I'm so angry at her, Veronica," he croaked. "I don't understand how she could be so weak, how she could think that she needed the escape when I was the one he hit, when all she did was sit in the next room and hope that the blood wouldn't be noticeable in the carpet. And I tried to understand for so long. I thought about how hard it must have been for her, knowing that he didn't love her, being trapped in that house and in that life, but now all I can think about is the times I thought about ending it, when I was hurt really bad, or after Lilly, and how I stayed around for her. Because I didn't want her to find me. Because I didn't want her to feel the guilt of not having been able to protect me. But she didn't think I was enough for her."

Looking back, the best thing for him might have been to tell him that his mother had loved him, that perhaps it was that guilt that had pushed her to make the jump, that he must know how there were times when all the logic in the world didn't make a different in the gape of your pain. But what Veronica did was crouch beside him and agree, and that feeling that she was absolutely present with him helped him more than her words.

"You're right, Logan," she said, placing her arms around him. She didn't actually call his mother weak but it was all over her tone. "The hero is the one who stays," she had continued, fiercely, and the way she spoke made him think that she had told herself this over and over. "The hero is the one who stays."

"I never said I was the hero," Veronica said, quietly for once. "But you need to let me explain." Logan opened his mouth, about to tell her that he didn't need to do anything and show her the door, but he wasn't quite fast enough. "Remember the year before I left, how there was something I wasn't telling you? Well, I spent my first summer at the FBI using their resources when I could to track down Gory Sorokin."

A memory nudged softly at Logan with the same uncommitted prodding as when he thought of the SATs or the cranberry allergy that he had since grown out of: something that had been urgent at one time, but was faded and benign now. "The corpse? Veronica, Gory Sorokin was killed that first summer you were in Virginia."

"Yeah, but still, he was-" and Logan remembered.

"Connected." Even as he said the word, he felt the totally unwelcome beginnings of the very specific dread that came from worrying about Veronica Mars. "You tried to shut down the connections. And you didn't tell me because you knew I'd flip."

"I pictured you sitting outside my bedroom window," she concurred. "Or telling my dad. So I did it as quietly as possible. But it wasn't quiet enough, and the FBI higher ups figured it out. I thought I would be sent home, but I kind of got recruited. They needed some of the information I had, anyway, so I attached myself to the deal."

Logan tried to concentrate on her heat and breathing and dimensions, the physical signs of her presence, in order to ward off a panic attack that belonged to ten years ago. Remarkably, his voice was fine as he said, "You always were persistent. So you got to sit in with everybody's favorite wiretappers."

"At the end of that first summer, yeah. I got to see all the glamor of the FBI's finest surveillance vans in between getting coffee and listening to all the fun nicknames they had for me, most of which revolved around references to Barbie. But then right before I was supposed to go back for junior year, they wanted me to do something else." She breathed deeply, examining him for signs of shock. "They kept sending agents in with the Sorokin happy good-times mafia gang, and they kept disappearing. They needed someone…untraceable. Clean. And I said yes."

Before the last syllable was complete, Logan was invading her personal space. "Are you out of your mind?!" His voice filled the room, awkward angles of rage and panic in the tone. "You weren't any more clean than those agents were. You could have been made at any time. Gory Sorokin saw your face -"

"And he was dead! When I told my dad I was transferring, that was true. I transferred to Britmore College in Connecticut, the school where Gory's second cousin Misha went. The whole thing was secret, but we took precautions. I had a handler. We went in increments, letting me fall in with Misha, eventually getting introduced to higher and higher levels in the organization. No one recognized me. I had new records that were absolutely untraceable. I actually earned my bachelors there." She stopped, looking at him almost with disappointment. "You really haven't heard any of this? It was a big deal."

"Yeah, I heard something about it, but it was in New York in 2010. Not exactly my jurisdiction. At that point the only thing that I was really focused on was learning how to make kids read Dickens. Or, you know, read anything." He shifted, fidgeted a bit. "So you busted everybody's favorite crime syndicate. Does that get you a medal these days, or a presidential IOU or something?"

"I cashed that in pretty quickly actually. I used the experience from the investigation as a stepping stone, set myself up as kind of a fixer. I get called in to do whatever's needed on an investigation- extended surveillance, undercover, even just the fresh set of eyes to pick up something that everyone else has missed. But before that I went home." She nailed him with a stare. "I needed to apologize and tell my dad the truth. I needed to see if there was anything left in Neptune that was worth it. But you were gone, so I left."

There was a part of Logan, the part that used to assure his mother that he was alright in a voice taut with unreleased screams, that wanted to forgive Veronica. In some ways he wanted to accept her reasoning and give up this painful ground. But he remembered scratching a pencil along all the pads in his hotel room, hoping that she had left some kind of secret message etched just for him, and knew he needed more.

"You disappeared," he said quietly, and left it at that.

"I was doing it to save you," she returned, just a touch of desperation creeping into her words. Part of him warmed at that, at how much she cared to make him understand. It was clear that her confessions by now were reluctant and unscripted. "The Sorokins were…horrible. The case we built was unbreakable, but part of me didn't want to believe the things that they had done. And I didn't know who Gory had told about you. I needed them all out of the game. I needed to make sure that you weren't going to wake up to some Russian scumbag pointing a gun to your head as payback for insulting the brotherhood."

"You still could have told me! Sent me a postcard! 'Dear Logan, I'm alive. Wish you were here.'"

"I gave you this instead," she screamed. "You have a nice house and a job that you like because I gave up three years of my life to make sure that you could. I did that for you!"

They stood close together. Logan's body was guarded, Veronica's open but only in the flaming way of anger. Softly Logan said, "I would rather have had the postcard."

Veronica's face twisted. She grabbed her bag and went for the door. "I'm watching Curtis's place tonight. Obviously I was wrong to trust your instincts."

Logan stood staring at the door for two full minutes. Then he sat and tried to do some grading. It was getting closer to finals, he already had too many classes in his plate, and this past week hadn't helped with that at all. But he only finished about five essays before he set down his pen and called Jack.

Jack's voice was husky and slightly blurred by the gym noise in the background as he said hello, a frequent occurrence.

"Veronica's back," Logan started immediately. "She's back and she has all these explanations about why she left. I've spent a third of my life being angry at her and I don't know if I can stop. I want to just numb everything about what it feels like to see her face again."

"Are they reasons or excuses?"

"Reasons," Logan admitted, running a hand through his hair. "If she's telling the truth-"

"She good for that?"

"Sometimes. She always had problems with the full on honesty. But if she's learned how, then I get why she would do it. I would have done the same, it just drives me nuts that she would."

Jack paused and for a moment all Logan could hear was his slightly ragged breathing. Then, "Quit the double standard. If she's capable, assume that she can deal with herself. Try for forgiveness, even if you never talk to her again." He took a long drink from his water bottle. Logan could hear the ticking as his bike slowed down. "That's my advice. Apply it however you want."

"I just want her to admit she's not invincible. And forgiveness I could do, if she had left any sign that she thought I was worth saying goodbye to."

Logan had cried in front of Jack before, although he tended not to. But Jack had literally dragged him, kicking and screaming, away from bars and liquor stores, particularly in those first few months. There was little that could embarrass him in front of the man, so he wasn't put off when Jack got quiet on the other end of the phone in the face of his clogged throat.

After a minute, Jack said calmly, "God knows my ex-husband would laugh himself to death if he knew I was saying this, but maybe you should communicate that to her. And even if she's still not what you need, maybe this was a good exercise in exorcism."

"Yeah," Logan sighed, knowing that Jack right, already dreading trying to speak to Veronica about emotions. When there was a knock on the door, he was glad to distract himself. "Thanks for this. I'll talk to you later," he told Jack, and went to answer it.

He knew the second before he opened the door who would be on the other side but he sighed and did it anyway. Indeed, Veronica stood in the hall, looking irate.

"Curtis. Stakeout. Now. If you're really concerned about danger, you can come."

Logan imagined a world where he said no, where he went back to grading papers, went to bed early and brought his a-game at school the next day. What an alternate universe that would be. He checked his pockets for wallet, phone and keys, and grabbed his jacket. "Well, my life has been lacking in life-threatening danger lately." He closed the door and stepped with her out into the hall.


	7. Chapter 7

Veronica's car was a step up from the beat up LeBaron that Logan mentally associated with her. It was nondescript dark navy, not particularly shiny and clearly not a rental.

"Is this your Mystery Machine? Should I have brought my Scooby Snacks?" he asked, sliding automatically into the passenger seat.

"I get to borrow them from different agencies wherever I am," she replied, a little stiffly. "A car in every port or something."

Conversation clearly was not going to be an easy route, particularly after the screaming match they had just finished. Logan focused on figuring out a comfortable way to settle his legs.

"Curtis's first wife died a couple years after they got married. Cancer." Veronica told him as they slid silently to a vantage point across the street from the house. "He lives here with his current wife, a daughter from the first marriage, and a daughter and son from the second."

"I've met them," Logan informed her. "At the back to school barbeque, staff holiday party, whatever. They're sweet. Wish I was the son they adopted for wacky sitcom hijinks." Veronica nodded without comment, and they were silent.

Stakeouts hadn't changed significantly from the high school version he kept preserved in his mind. As they sat there quietly, Logan wondered if he had expected something different, a middle-aged version of Veronica Mars, private dick, eating jerky or pork rinds in a greasy tank top and listening to the game on a portable radio with headphones. It was a new image and a jarring one, but not the first possibility he had thought of over the years, potential new lives for the woman who disappeared from his.

That view of Mr. Mars's face as he retreated into the empty apartment after Veronica had left, confused and sad but not alarmed, had convinced Logan that she was not in an unusual amount of danger. He had been reassured enough not to chase her or to imagine her dead somewhere. Instead he had tucked her into a thousand new roles- a detective after he watched an episode of CSI late at night, an animal trainer when he saw an ad for the zoo, once a psychologist when the light hit Jen's hair in a particular way- to try to imagine where she was if she wasn't in his world. The reality was a pretty good fit, better than some, but without the fire that he frequently imagined.

As much as he had adored her and frequently forgiven or overlooked her faults, he had always known that there was an insular selfishness to Veronica. She displayed deep loyalty, even to the point of putting herself in life-threatening danger for others, but often that was just incidental in her search for peace of mind. In the end, she usually acted in the best interests of herself and possibly her father. She could close herself off like no one he had ever known, even in his star-studded childhood, and it seemed to him that she was using that quality to smooth this grown up self. It was clear that she was passionate about the case and even somewhat about her relationship with him, but there was a lot that was contained. He tried to adjust his view of her to one where she marshaled her emotions rather than using her insight for blackmail and striking sharply outward in anger and pain.

Or maybe she just didn't like what she did. Maybe the things she saw and the people she had to deal with had caught up with her at some point and the righteous relentlessness that helped her power through was running out. Maybe-

"I did think about finding you," Veronica said abruptly. "After the assignment was finished, when I went back to Neptune and you weren't there, I thought about it. But my dad said that bad stuff- more bad stuff- had happened to you, and I wasn't sure that you would want to talk to me."

"Grade-A instincts," he snapped, but it was anger more residual than real and he subsided quickly. Score one for 'damned if you do, damned if you don't,' though. Somehow he wanted to talk to her all the time, even when it meant becoming their dysfunctional selves again. Quietly, he said, "I thought about checking to see if you were back." And then, gaining the strength for honesty from the way her eyes were focused on the house rather than on him, "I thought about that a lot. I ended up kind of flunking on the make amends part of sobriety." Even for the dark of the car, it felt like too much to admit that there was too much amend-making to do, an overwhelming amount, to people he probably couldn't list.

But Veronica was there, and although her leaving had been and still was crushing, he had made a lot of mistakes in their relationship. "Veronica." He took a deep breath, striving for formal because it was so much better than desperate. "You deserved an apology for the things that I did, the things I said. I crossed the line so many times, and I should have told you then. I shouldn't have just swept what I did after Lilly's death- or any other time- under the rug. If I could go back...If I could go back, I would-"

"It's okay," she interrupted. It almost sounded like she had gone through these same thoughts herself, as if she had already figured out her answer if he ever asked for absolution. It surprised him, still, because the Veronica who was born after Lilly's death didn't have forgiveness as her default setting. "We were kind of copilots on the crazy train, anyway. Sorry for the mixed metaphor. Mark me down on my English grade."

"I only really get that picky about plural modifiers and fragments."

"Well, I don't modify many plurals, so we should be fine." She paused briefly. "I do fragment things, though. Like lives. You shouldn't be the only one apologizing. Freshman year when you asked me to be careful investigating the rapist, to take you with me, I should have done that. I was just stubborn. I guess I figured I knew myself best, and that after everything I went through, I felt a little bulletproof." She must have felt as if he was staring at her, because she added defensively, "It doesn't make a lot of sense- if I was bulletproof, how could these things keep happening?- but I was like Mission Impossible Barbie back then."

Feeling a little defensive himself for that girl who he loved so much, Logan retorted, "No need to sell Mission Impossible Barbie short. She did a lot of good." The statement had a balance of truth and contrariness as he thought back to the people she had helped, the confused and betrayed and abandoned to whom she had given answers in exchange for the well-being of herself and her relationships, in exchange for his own pressure and complaints.

"But, you know, you're really different than you were too." She seemed to be examining the Curtis's home more closely now, as if expecting at any minute for the principal to come out twirling a black mustache. "Teaching. Not exactly the top guess for those of us playing at home."

"Yeah."

"How did that happen?"

There was quiet for a long enough time that he didn't know if he was going to answer. Then, "Because it's what the only member of my family who I actually want to be like does," he said, giving her a partial truth. When he glanced at her, she had turned from the window and was facing him. She nodded gratefully.

He clumsily turned the conversation from himself. "You've done well for yourself too. I mean, the consulting thing, that's good, right?"

"Yeah." She turned back to look at the house. "Yeah, it's been good. Probably perfect for me."

"But?"

"Huh?"

"But, and, however, except…pick a transition, V."

The pause was even longer this time. He almost wanted Curtis to be doing something nefarious so that the two of them wouldn't be staring out the window at a darkened suburban house. "It's my dad," Veronica said so quietly that he tried to read her lips in the darkness to figure out what she was saying. "He was sick a couple of years ago. It was just Lyme disease, but it didn't get treated for a while and…And he's fine now, you know. He's fine, and Alicia was there, but I found out later. He didn't tell me for months. And it was so easy for him not to. I hardly talked to him, so he barely even had an opportunity to lie. My work has been good and I've done a lot of stuff that I think was worthwhile, but there are other jobs I could be doing that wouldn't keep me so distant."

Logan didn't know what to say that would sound proud but not condescending. Luckily he was interrupted by his cell phone. He squinted at the screen and frowned. He had given Danny Webber his number because sometimes the kid asked to meet him before or after school to talk books, and it just made it easier for them to be able to contact each other.

He was closer with Danny than probably any other student he had ever had, to the point that someone should have probably stepped in to make sure it was more Freedom Writers than To Catch a Predator. But he knew that Danny had had a rough childhood, and while that was nothing special around the neighborhood, it hadn't hardened Danny in the way that it had most of his other students. Maybe it was all of the books that he read, but Danny had somehow kept a sort of innocence, a belief that there was a better life waiting for him, one that was attainable. Logan wanted to help him stay that innocent, to help him toward the life he believed was possible, but apparently he needed to set some boundaries.

"Danny?" he said, picking up the phone with a note of warning beneath the greeting.

"Mr. L," he panted. "God, Mr. L, I know you don't work at the elementary school, but I need to talk to Mrs. Zane. She's my little brother's teacher. Can you get me her phone number?"

"I didn't know first graders were so focused on school these days," Logan says, trying for joking but ending up sounding puzzled. Danny took things seriously, but not usually this seriously.

"It's Sam. My brother, Sam." Danny sounded like he had stopped running now, but was starting to hold back tears. "My aunt was supposed to pick him up from his tutoring session, but she forgot and now we can't find him. I wanted to know if Mrs. Zane knew where he was."

Logan was sitting straighter, tense in the car seat. "You already called the police?"

" _Yes_ , we called them and everyone we could think of. But he's nowhere, Mr. L, and we're starting to think something bad happened."

"Okay, Danny. I'm going to call Mrs. Zane and a few other people. We're going to help fix this."

He hung up and turned to Veronica. She was just getting off the phone as well. She placed her hands on the steering wheel, clenched her fingers, but didn't turn on the car. There was nowhere for them to go.

"Shit," she said, her voice low. " _Shit_."

"You heard?"

"Yeah, the station just called me. Six year old male, missing since late this afternoon."

"Brother of one of my students."

"Goddamn it."

"It's definitely not Curtis. We've been sitting here watching Mayberry house all night and he hasn't moved."

"And it's not Caldwell unless he has a teleporter or that stupid dog can do his bidding." Off of his look, she reminded him. "His mother walked the dog that night. This creepy looking Chinese crested named-"

"Maximillian."

"Yeah…?"

Logan's face paled. "Go to Caldwell's house. Now."

Veronica turned on the car and pulled out of the alley. "What's wrong?"

"There's a teacher at my school named Elaine Krazny who spent fifteen minutes the other day showing off a Chinese crested named Maximillian."

"Caldwell's mother's name is Elaine." Veronica's voice got louder. "Elaine Caldwell, who was the only person to leave the house that night. God damn it. How did we miss that?!" Logan could tell that whoever had done the background checks on the school staff would probably be packing their desk by the next day.

Logan's fist was clenching on the knee he had raised against the dashboard. "Mrs. Krazny lies about her age." As he said it, he felt in his voice the echo of all of the students who had ever giggled over the idea in the hallways. Veronica glanced at him briefly, questioning, before bearing down on the roadway. "There's always been a rumor, an…I don't know, a theory, that Krazny lied about her age a long time ago so that she would get to keep teaching for longer."

"She probably has a different birthdate, maybe even a different social on file with the school."

"And it's not like anyone spends all that much time poring over the records looking for discrepancies. No one in forty-five years thought that she might be a danger to the kids."

Veronica took a sharp turn around a corner. She was driving so fast that sirens were apparently unnecessary for her. Logan anchored himself subtly to the door. "Do you think it's some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing? Or a new kind of elder abuse? 'Kill a few kids or I'll stop getting food for you'?"

Logan shrugged, a short, violent motion. "She seems together enough to take a bath and remember to buy groceries, but she's definitely losing it a little upstairs. Probably suggestible if you're willing to invest long term. We need to get to Caldwell, see if he convinced her about something."

Veronica pulled up to the house smoothly. She leaned over and grabbed her bag from the floor by Logan's feet. She riffled through it and pulled out a Metro police badge case. She slid a card into it so that a small, serious version of her face stared out. She did a seemingly automatic check around the car before getting out. Logan followed, loping behind her as she strode confidently along the short walkway to the house. She did everything expertly, familiarly, and he remembered with a jolt that this was what she did all the time now. He wondered if her appearance hindered her investigations, if her prettiness made it hard for her to be taken seriously by law enforcement guys, or if her slightly more mature face made it harder to lure suspects in with a hair flip and a ditzy voice. But she knocked firmly on the door, face serious, and he remembered that Veronica Mars didn't take shit from anyone. And when Caldwell opened the door, a large man with musculature declining into fat and angry eyes that Logan recognized as resorting to force to hide weakness, Veronica shifted her weight and lightened her eyes so that suddenly she was bubbling up at him, and Logan remembered that marks hadn't gotten any smarter or less easily distractible.

"Hi! I'm May and this is Logan and we work with your mom. We were wondering if we could come in and talk to her about some stuff in the curriculum."

"She's not here." Caldwell's voice was high and hoarse. "I'll tell her to call you when she gets back." He moved to close the door.

Veronica didn't put her body between the door and the frame, but she positioned herself subtly so social convention would force him to keep it open. "Well, it's kind of urgent, actually. They didn't tell us about teaching emergencies in school, but they happen! Do you know where we can find her?"

Clearly nervous, Caldwell stepped back from the open door. "I don't know where she is. Sorry."

Logan was about to step forward, but Veronica dropped the act and advanced herself. "Please. You know she's not at the store or walking the dog. You know she's out there with a gun and a kid. Someone's son, someone's brother, a little kid who's part of a family that's going to be destroyed if you don't call it off."

"Call it off?" The door opened wider again as puzzlement warred with anger in Caldwell's tone. "What makes you think I have any power to call it off? I was working a good job, living a nice life, before I came home to take care of her. I was expecting normal stuff for an older parent, making sure she doesn't burn down the kitchen or fall getting out of bed, not realizing that she's started murdering children. What was I supposed to do about that?"

Disbelievingly, "Maybe tell someone about it?" Veronica spat, all traces of the optimistic high school teacher you could trust gone.

"She's my mother." Caldwell spread his hands hopefully, voice weak. "I thought maybe if I just kept things normal for her, she would stop on her own."

"This isn't nail-biting or potty training." She crossed her arms and stared him down. "Tell us where she is. I'm charging you as an accessory either way, but maybe this way you'll feel like less of a total shit."

"I don't know."

"Oh yes, you do." Logan spoke for the first time. "You know and you're going to tell us." He met Caldwell's eyes; all the anger was gone and there was only weakness left. "Covering up for her isn't helping. She's not going to stop on her own. You need to tell us so we can go do what you were too pathetic for."

Veronica elbowed him slightly, apparently thinking derision was the wrong technique, but Logan knew the posture of a person hiding the thought that they were useless inside where no one could see. He knew that playing on that insecurity was not strictly ethical, but he thought of Danny's little brother and didn't care.

"She's not going to thank you," he persisted. "If she ever comes back to herself, she's going to hate what she did, and that you let her."

Caldwell stared down the walk for no reason at all. "She's at the school." The words came out with a sigh. There was tiredness and something that was probably relief in the way he leaned toward them. "She has this dementia medication. She tells the kids it's candy, but it makes them drowsy when they eat it. She doesn't want to hurt them," he clarified, earnestness creeping into his tone. "She forgot the pills at school today. I don't know if she has another kid yet, but she'll go get the pills before she does anything."

Veronica turned abruptly and started moving back toward the car. Logan didn't know why he had expected her to say thank you. "A patrol car will be here in fifteen minutes to pick you up," she called over her shoulder. "Don't try to run. And if I find out you were lying to us about anything, I will make sure that the detention administration is not sympathetic to requests for solitary confinement. Even in prison they don't like people who hurt kids."

Logan leaned closer. He was alone on the porch. "Maybe especially in prison," he said, voice low and menacing, and pulled the knob so the door shut on Caldwell's fearful face.

He strode after Veronica, who was already on her cell phone requesting a pickup for Caldwell and cars to scan the area around the school. He got back into the passenger seat; she slid into the driver's side, still talking.

"We've got the school." Her voice was all business. Logan doubted anyone was questioning the fact that he was a civilian. "I'll be in touch with status reports."

"What are the stats on this?" Logan asked, not caring that his fear and tension were leaking out into his voice. "How likely is it that we're going to find her there, much less find Sam alive?"

Veronica skidded a glance around before peeling away from the curb. "Not sure. She's probably had him for between ninety minutes and two hours. If we're considering crossing town a couple of times, plus resistance on the kid's part…"

"We're still not sure." He felt around faintly for normalcy. "Are your rip-roaring adventures usually this bad?"

"Sometimes," she replied. "Sometimes they're better."

"And sometimes they're worse," he finished, and settled in for whatever they were going to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, friends. Probably one more chapter left, and it's the one that I'm still struggling through. I might not get to post next Friday (combo of getting to finals time, writer's block and the fact that candle-lighting for Shabbat is getting hellishly early) but I will hopefully post within two weeks. Hopefully you all can hold out for the stunning conclusion.
> 
> I've been writing fanfic for nearly half my life, and I've gotten some of the best reviews I've ever received for this story. So if we could keep that up, or even increase the numbers, that would be spectacular. Thanks, besties!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is two weeks late, but I swore to myself that I would get this out before 2014…which I also failed at, but only by two hours and 38 minutes. Anyway, enjoy.

Logan had always known that the most awful things could hide behind exteriors plain or beautiful. He was still disappointed that the school didn't look different, that there was no flashing lightning and sinister laughter, that it looked just like its same worn self. Veronica parked haphazardly and they slammed across the parking lot.

"Element of surprise," Veronica reminded him as he used his key to let them into the building, and he led her silently through the halls to Mrs. Krazny's classroom. From around the corner, he could see that the door was closed, but there was a muted sprinkle of light glancing through the window into the hallway. He and Veronica had a near-silent argument about what to do, but it was solved as Mrs. Krazny came out into the hall. She was moving slowly, hindered by the small body against her side, but she was stronger than Logan had realized she would be. He shivered a little hearing the way Sam's shoes were being shuffled along the floor. Caldwell had understated when he had said that the medication made the kids drowsy. Sam was totally knocked out.

"I've got backup waiting outside," Veronica hissed, as close to his ear as their height differential would allow.

Still trying to track Mrs. Krazny's progress down the darkened hall, Logan did not look over as he responded, "Having the A-Team storm in is a mistake."

"It's just you and me for now," she managed before the shuffling stopped and Mrs. Krazny cautiously whispered a hello through the darkness. Logan froze for half a second, fear tingling automatically between his ribs and in his stomach. "I've got this," he said, the fear speaking in his voice, and he stepped into the hallway.

"Hi, Mrs. Krazny," he said, wondering if his voice seemed as even to her as he was trying to keep it. "I needed to grab a couple of things. What are you doing here?"

"Hello, dear." And just in those two words, Logan could tell that she was gone. There was a gun, a small, dainty one that looked almost pretty in her hand, tucked somewhere between her body and the back of Sam's neck, tilting upward. Logan didn't know much about physics or the precise arrangement of the inside of a child's body, but he felt safe in assuming that being shot there would be unfortunate for the spine or brain or both. "You have arrived at the most inconvenient time."

"I've been told that's a skill of mine." He was walking toward her slowly, hands in his pockets. "But are you sure that this is one of those times? That's Sam Webber isn't it? And he looks like he is asleep. Can I give you a hand, maybe drive him home?"

"You're such a sweet boy," she said. He drew in a breath half a sigh of relief, but then she laughed. "But Salinger told me, 'That's the nice thing about carousels. They always play the same song.'" She slid herself against the wall, eased herself and Sam to the floor. He groaned very slightly, but did not wake. Logan stepped forward, instinct only, but she had already readjusted the gun. She shook her head. "Please don't. I do it painlessly and if you interrupt any more, things will become so much messier."

"I've been shot at," Logan said, his voice anesthetized. He felt almost high, separated from himself and frantic because he couldn't escape his own numbness. "There's nothing painless about it. And that's leaving out the part where you want to kill him."

Her hand tightened around the gun. "More painless than growing up here."

"Elaine," Logan said, and regretted it as soon as he did. They had once had a hostage situation training session, and he thought that calling her by her first name was the right thing to do, but maybe that was wrong. There were teachers who he called by their first names, but Mrs. Krazny had never been one of them, so maybe instead of personalizing the situation for her it would break her out of everything. He couldn't have this be another instance of "My name is Cassidy," where everything hinged on a wrong word said. He clenched his fist and wished he and Veronica had worked out a signal. "There are so many kids who can grow up here and get out. You must have seen them, the kids who are just amazing."

She smiled pity and condescension at him. "Sweet boy. You just don't yet know that they're not enough. Hundreds and hundreds I've taught over the years, forcing their heads full of Homer and Poe, and it's just meant sending them out where words are not the weapons they can use. This is so much better, so much easier for them. This is how I can truly help them. I'm only sorry that I realized it now after I missed the chance to help so many others."

Explaining this to someone with intact logical faculties was difficult. He had seen dozens of teachers start their careers at Jackson only to leave, discouraged, by the seeming fruitlessness of what they were trying to accomplish, at the lack of resources and governmental support, the apathy of the families and the relentless focus on test scores and getting the kids graduated and out. The effect that they were having was just something that you had to take on faith. He had struggled to find that faith, but even when he lost it, he tried to push through in practice if not in mind until he found it again.

"Look, I know that it might be hard, teaching so many kids when odds are their lives aren't going to become better for it in the long run. But context is _everything_." He'd never liked his voice, all awkward angles and the fear of breaking half the time, but he stretched it to the limit, trying to remind her of what she had dedicated her life to. "You must have seen the light in a kid's eyes when they read Anne Frank and realize that she had so much hope for so little reason, or when they describe Atticus Finch like talking about him enough will make him real. You might not remember it now, but you must have known it once."

She readjusted Sam, and Logan hoped that his face did not betray his panic. He had no idea what the drugs were doing to the kid while they talked. "I was fooled as you were for so long, sure that I could do enough with so little. But I went to the church and the good Lord told me that you must train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it. The world trains them so differently than we do that our lessons our worthless. I choose only the ones whose families cannot be bothered to love them before they are dead. I save the pure souls from a life that does not care for them. I save the world from more people who might grow into monsters. I remind people of the help that we need." She smiled at him, and it was so pure, so without even the hidden, layered malice of the evil people who Logan had met in his life, that he had to fight taking a step back.

He realized, perhaps too late, that there was very little that he could say to a literally demented elderly teacher, but he tried. Ten years of discussing literature and the occasional AA meeting which overlapped with church services had given him a few back-pocket bible passages. "He also says that "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me," and I hate to contradict a good Christian woman, but that death grip doesn't seem particularly welcoming to me."

It was the wrong thing to say, and Logan didn't know how he could turn from silver-tongued expert to bumbling and thoughtless in a sentence. Mrs. Krazny closed down. "My plan has only helped. I surely don't need to give you a further lesson in the needs of the many." She spoke in the derisive tone of a teacher toward the least favorite student.

There was a small sound behind him but he couldn't turn away from Mrs. Krazny. He kept his eyes trained on her pistol and couldn't confirm that it was Veronica coming toward him until she was at his elbow. His breath lumped in his throat when he saw her standing with her feet braced against the impact of her own gun. He suddenly knew how she had felt when he had come into the River Styx, brandishing a weapon of his own. Part of him wanted to rejoice, to step back and believe that his part was over, that he had been saved. He had no doubt that she would be able to shoot far better than his teenage self, but that didn't stop the panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

"This is Veronica," he told Mrs. Krazny. He pressed his fingers into his palms in an effort to channel his desperation that way so his voice wouldn't betray him. "I guess I don't have to do my usual, 'Be careful, she's a pistol' introduction."

"No," Veronica said, concentrating ahead of herself, on the figures against the wall rather than on him. "Do the pistol one. The other ones are much less complementary. And less applicable. Mrs. Krazny, please put the weapon down and release the child."

"Young lady." Mrs. Krazny somehow managed to say this while sounding chastising and disapproving. "Young lady, while I have no doubt that you have the experience and eyesight to outshoot me, in this case, I believe I have a distinct advantage."

Veronica's face was so steady that Logan had to listen hard for the catch in her voice. "About six years ago, this weird little piece of legislation passed. Most people didn't pay attention to it because all it said was that extreme force measures without repercussions were permitted in hostage situations with serial killers, and really, I think we're filling up our quota of those for the year right now." She shifted her stance a whisper, and Mrs. Krazny's eyes followed her, mouth ticking downward just slightly at the corners. Logan thought that his father would have been envious at the way Veronica could work a room. "Ma'am, due to the extent of your crimes, I have been authorized to take emergency measures in this situation."

Logan almost thought it was over. Mrs. Krazny seemed to shift the boy in her arms as if she were preparing to release him. But he had forgotten how he could upset his father, then tiptoe around for days until he believed it over, only to be confronted by a resurgence of anger that had been in hibernation. He should have known better, really, because Veronica did not move, did not relax, and Mrs. Krazny readjusted her grip on her gun next, pressing it further into Sam's neck.

"One day I'll teach you to bluff, dear," she said blandly. "You need follow through and the assurance that your opponent does not want to lose. I hadn't planned to live, but if you had meant to use that gun regardless of the child, you would have done it while I was distracted. I'm afraid that I hold all the cards, if you'll forgive the lengthy metaphor. Poor student habits sink in after so long."

"Mrs. Krazny," Veronica smiled tightly. "I'm sure that you have been underestimated in the past because of your appearance. You're making that same mistake now. Put down the boy, or I will shoot you."

"Veronica is the best poker player I know," Logan said. "If she's bluffing, it's only because she has blackmail material to take all your winnings even if she loses." He stepped forward. "But I don't want her to lose." He spoke in a low tone, an animal-soothing tone, and even Veronica seemed to have been lulled, because he managed to place himself in front of the gun. "I know that you care about the children. If you didn't, you wouldn't give them drugs to make sure that they don't feel anything. You know that this can't be right for them."

"Who decides what is right for them?" And if Logan thought that she would cry saying it, he was wrong, because it came out barbed and vicious. "Their parents, who ignore them for drugs or sex or work? Their social workers, who forget about them? Their congressmen, who only care about votes and money to line their pockets? No. I hold this pure one in my arms and I decide to let him rest." Mania had entered her eyes, and Logan was glad for it.

"Maybe," he said, moving still closer. "But not this one. His name is Samuel Nathan Webber. You taught his big brother Danny two years ago. There are ten years between them because their mom, Monica, adopted Danny when he was little. And she loves him so much it doesn't make a difference, but she wanted to have a child of her own too. She tried for years, and finally she had another little boy. She named him Samuel after the one in the bible. The one whose mother prayed for him so hard that God gave her a son. That's who you have in your arms." He had tucked one of his arms between her body and Sam's. It was indelicate, but he was just going to have to slide the boy out. "There was a mistake made today, leaving him alone, but this is not someone who has no one to care for him." Sam was lying on the floor beside them. There was a faint shuffling, and Logan guessed it was Veronica putting the cavalry on alert. Mrs. Krazny was panting. She still gripped the gun tightly, and Logan gently redirected it so that it was pointing toward his own chest.

It was the first time that he had placed himself in danger like this with so much to lose. He was no longer a depressed, semi-suicidal fuckup. He had things he loved, things that he wanted to keep and return to. This wouldn't be a release, there would not be relief that he could be finished. It would be a theft, and he tried not to tremble at the thought.

"I have no family. I would be on the front page for weeks. If what we do it worthless, than I won't matter anyway. Will you do it, Elaine? Is it my turn?"

He had his hand clasped around hers on the gun, gently supporting her grip. She sobbed a little, sagged away from the wall. Her hand loosened on the weapon and he caught it neatly, placing it carefully on the floor behind him. He heard footsteps and someone picked it up.

"I think it's my turn, actually," Veronica said quietly. Logan helped Mrs. Krazny to her feet. Two uniformed officers moved from where they were flanking Veronica so that they could support Mrs. Krazny. There was a moment where the only sound was their boots departing into the darkness, the only thing he could feel was the heat of Veronica's arm beside his.

"And I thought getting out of Neptune would get me away from all of this soap opera shit," he managed, before the hallway filled with police and paramedics and crime scene techs and a fuming Dr. Curtis, and the scene dissolved into light and noise and chaos.

Much later, Veronica found him tucked against a wall in the hallway behind the gym. He was bent over, palms on his knees as he panted for breath. He had given his statement, stayed around long enough for Sam to be pronounced fit by the EMTs and reunited with his family, but eventually the panic and adrenaline had caught up with him.

He had called Jen's office and asked for an emergency session. He was thinking about his bed. He tried to remember if Dr. Curtis had said anything about cancelling school the next day. He couldn't catch his breath. His shoulders shuddered and he realized that he was crying, not emotionally, just a release of tears.

Eventually he looked up, wiped his face and tried to breathe deeply. Veronica was leaning on the wall across from him, face passive and silent. She handed him a bottle of water.

"You were great, back there," she says, voice hushed to match the quiet around them. He sipped slowly from a bottle. "That stuff about Sam…that was just what she needed to hear. I'm glad you knew it."

"Made it up."

"Really?"

He snorted. "Yeah. Not like Danny spills his family secrets during our discussions of The Sun Also Rises."

"Strange. I start reading Hemingway, and I just can't help talking about the times I convinced my dad to do Disney karaoke."

He smiled, breathed out a laugh. "Yeah, well my family was more about making up stories than having them."

She crossed her arms and then uncrossed them just as quickly. "I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier. You've done really well with this whole investigation."

Logan turned the bottle in his fingers. "I'm not sure what surprises me more," he said, without heat, "The apology, or that it was just a few hours ago that you were yelling at me because I was a jackass."

"Please. It's the apology. Yelling comes around every day, but a Veronica Mars apology is something you get framed."

He was in a button down, but his fingers groped at the sleeves anyway, trying to pull them over his hands. "I'm sorry that I didn't realize it was her sooner. I've known her for years. I had all the pieces but I didn't put them together, and maybe if I had…"

"More like you didn't know that you were looking at a puzzle." He looked at her only dartingly, but he saw compassion in the softness of her features, and the warmth that filled him made him look away. "Logan, I saw you almost every day for four years. And even when you missed school or wouldn't take off your shirt to swim, I didn't notice. In the limo on Homecoming night, when Duncan sprayed you with champagne and you yelled at him because it was your dad's tux, you weren't just angry, you were afraid. And I didn't get it until Trina basically yelled it in my face, and I didn't fully believe it until your dad beat a man half to death in front of me." She moved so that she could touch him, tugging his fingers from where they had managed to sneak through his cuffs so that they could wrap shyly around hers. "When people want to hide things, they can do that for a long time. It's my job to find them out eventually, and I'm pretty damn good at my job."

Her name echoed down another hall, close, and they both looked up at the sound. "I guess I'm a little too good," she said wryly. "A week in town and they can't function without me." She kissed his cheek quickly and started stepping away backwards. "You can go home, get some sleep. I have to do some stuff for a while, but I'll be back, okay?" She was shadowed in the hallway where the darkness was inky as pain, lit only by the emergency exit sign. "Take care of yourself. I don't want to come back to find that you've let yourself go to pot."

"It's all about ecstasy now, anyway," Logan replied, voice airy. "Think you can help me bring some of that into my life?"

"I'll try." He couldn't see her any more, but then, "But go to sleep," ricocheted along the tile back at him. And when he finally did go to sleep that night, that was the sound he fixed in his mind.

The last few weeks of school were some of the worst of Logan's life. When he told Jack this, Jack raised an eyebrow and said, "Really?" because he had heard the Neptune horror stories, but didn't argue. If Logan was rating it high, it was high

Logan hadn't been expecting a parade or autograph requests, but the level of animosity shocked him. The first day back, two days after, was quiet. The parking lot was still shimmying with reporters, but inside, the students were hushed and subdued. Logan took over one of Mrs. Krazny's classes that afternoon, and had the urge to tap dance on the desk to get a reaction from them.

Danny Webber came up to him as he was packing up and thanked him again, handing over a cake with "Thank You!" emblazoned in large, roughly iced letters. "Sam and my mom made it."

"And Sam's doing okay?"

"Yeah," Danny said instinctively, but then added, lower and almost involuntarily, "He won't sleep with the lights off anymore."

"It'll take time, but it can be okay again," Logan had offered, and Danny had nodded, looking away, and left the room.

But in the days following, he began to get a taste of what he must have made junior year like for Veronica. An intrepid reporter did a feature on him, tracing him back to Neptune, rehashing his entire past. He had been invisible at the school until now because his family scandal was a thousand years old in celebrity gossip time. To his students, recalling who Aaron Echolls was would be like picking Errol Flynn out of a lineup: they had heard the name, but recognizing him would take a real pop culture expert. But after the article, everything- his prior arrests, his money- was displayed. He thought that it could all have been overlooked, might even have enhanced his reputation, except that there was also a large part of the story devoted to his cooperation with the police.

Things shifted after that. Students shoved against him in the hallways. Questions were answered grudgingly, around glares and gritted teeth. When he walked by, people would pretend to cough into their palms but tuck "narc!" into the exhalation as well. The other teachers patted his back, congratulated him briefly and sympathized over his dramatic status change, but there was still an off-putting aloofness. It was as if he had broken some kind of code that he hadn't known was there. He didn't regret what he had done, but he wished that he had given more than no thought at all to the reversal of everything that he had worked for since leaving Neptune. He had been Veronica's perfect resource, but now that was all he was seen as.

He had twice-weekly sessions with Jen now, something that he hadn't done for a long time. There was a lot to deal with: guilt and anger and the fact that Veronica hadn't contacted him and it had been three weeks. Picking his nails in the quiet of her office, he examined the carpet and finally asked if leaving might be a good idea.

Brusquely, she asked, "What's your plan, Logan?" He liked that Jen refused to coddle him, but sometimes he wished that she would.

"It wouldn't be giving up," he blurted, and as soon as he said it, he knew that it was one of those unfortunately telling mistakes. Jen stared pointedly and overlooked it, and he retracted every bad thought he had ever had about her. "I thought that maybe I would just take a break. It's been a while since I went anywhere that has normal representation in Congress." After a decade of talking to her, Logan knew most of Jen's cues. The one where she stayed quiet while raising an eyebrow or pursing her lips meant that it was still his turn to talk. "I just feel like I've wrapped everything up in this one thing, and I want to make sure that I'm not living a one track life. I did that before and it's nothing I want to go back to."

"Are you sure that you aren't running away from confrontation with the past that you left behind?"

"I know myself. I have to live with myself every day. I just want to make sure that there's more to me." He reached blindly over to the end table, snatching a pen to move between his fingers. "Do you…Do you think I'm ready for that?" He glanced up for a second and found her warm gaze waiting.

"I think you know what I'm going to ask you."

"I hate when you go full therapist on me," he groaned, because he did know what she was going to ask: Do _you_ think you're ready?

He was still contemplating the question as he oversaw his last final a few days later. A couple of kids had thawed or become brave enough to mumble toward him as they walked out, but far too many tossed their exams carelessly on his desk before bolting. He sighed as he collected the papers, tucking them into his bag and pausing only for a moment as the envelope containing his letter of resignation caught his eye. He closed up the bag and sat back at his desk, head in his hands.

He hated calling it that, but if he left, that's what he would show: that he was resigned, that he had given up. But the place where he had once invested himself had rejected him and he didn't know how else to deal with that.

All he really wanted to do was go home, order takeout and knock off a bottle of anything, maybe without the takeout part. What he would probably do was go home, order takeout and listen to "Eleanor Rigby" on repeat, but even the thought made feel sorry for himself. He took a couple of deep breaths. He was going to count to ten, then lift his head and call Jack for a rescue.

When he sat up twenty seconds later, Veronica was perched on the corner of the desk.

"One of these days I'm going to get motion detectors installed and that will be the end of your little teleportation act," he grumbled sourly.

"Yes. I quake in fear thinking of the day that you technologically cripple my skills. Curse you." She had the light, dramatic flair that he remembered, and it made him smile. She smiled back, a slow, growing thing, and seemed encouraged. "I'm sorry I took so long. I had some stuff to wrap up, but I thought it would be done sooner."

"It's okay." He rested his chin on his hand and looked up at her. He was pretty sure that he had crossed the line into looking foolishly besotted, something he hadn't had to worry about in a long time. "Hey, I like this apology thing. Soon I'll have enough saved up to get a free one."

"Oooh, I'm sorry. That promotion has expired. I do have this, though." She held out an envelope, and for one slack-jawed second he thought that she had somehow gotten his letter. Something must have shown on his face, because she didn't wait for him to open the packet to explain. "Commendation from the city for your work."

Shoving back from the desk, he went to remove the essays from his bulletin boards. Usually the kids asked for them back to save or hang at home, but this year only a few had. The rest seemed so caught up in his reputation as a police conspirator that they didn't take pleasure from his praise anymore. "Yeah. My work. Commendable." He pretended to throw a handful of confetti over his head before he yanked the first paper from the wall.

"I'm guessing it hasn't been sunshine city for you here?

"Only if you're talking about the sunshine that beats directly on one's head as they stand in hell."

She lifted herself fully onto his desk, resting her weight back on her palms as her legs dangled. "I'm sorry. I made it clear to the reporters that you were off limits, but I guess it was too late."

He had noticed that there had been no follow-up after that initial article, had even commented on it to Lisa when she had called to check up on him a few nights ago, although it had done little to comfort him when everything was already ruined. "It's okay. I appreciate it anyway." He focused on firmly pressing the thumbtacks into the cork in a neat row. He didn't want to blame Veronica because his mind knew that she didn't deserve it, but that didn't make the anger go away. He tightly added, "I'm sure you had a lot of stuff to do," hoping that his voice didn't betray him.

Either it was as smooth as he hoped, or she had decided against bristling from his resentment. Although her legs stopped swinging, her body did not curve in or shut down. "Yeah. I was actually…I was moving back. Not to Neptune, but I got my stuff from my place in New York and moved out to LA."

"Does that mean that all the nation's crime will be making the exodus with you? I'll have to alert my insurance company."

"I actually quit my job," she said, fast and a little breathless. He realized, very suddenly, that his opinion actually mattered to her. Looking proud and a little nervous, she added, "I've been working on my JD over the past few years and I got a job. Prosecuting with the California Department of Justice Victim's Services Unit, actually."

Eyes bright, he went and hugged her. "That's incredible, Veronica. I'm really…I'm happy for you." He stepped back, looking away to the side. "But isn't giving up against the Veronica Mars Code of Obstinacy, or something?" He tried to soften the words, but his own problem came out with a bite, and he wasn't sure she would want to answer.

The gentle way that her voice came out made him even angrier at himself. She took his hand. "Logan, it's not giving up to get yourself to someplace that's better for you. I'll still be helping people, but I might actually get to have a life now. Get a plant that I'll be around to water. Hang out with my dad. Maybe see if Wallace could still pick me out of a lineup." It was her turn to look away as she slowly added, "I heard that it wasn't going really well here so I went…This sounds like stalker level infinity, but…" She reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of forms.

"Crenshaw High, Los Angeles," he read at the top.

"I stopped there before I flew back. They're always looking for good teachers, and I told them I had one who might be interested." She looked up at him, shy and just slightly manipulative. "So are you, or am I going to have to go convince whoever teaches next door?"

"Well, as excellent as the sun will be for Mr. Hart's eczema, I think I could be convinced." They were smiling at each other, helplessly foolish, and it was like the kiss of her lips when she stole a French fry from his fingertips, like the dizzy closeness of holding her in cars and corridors, like the snort she gave whenever he said something that she found funny despite herself. He reached out a hand to tug her off the desk, and it was his body readjusting to being in love with Veronica Mars.

They were in the hallway when he realized that he had forgotten his bag. "I know it seems like they'll take any breathing human in the classroom these days, but they do actually like us to give the students grades on things," he called back to her. "Sticklers."

"Give 'em all As," she said, laughing. "Your last big bad boy moment."

He was grinning as he went to take his case, and it only faded slightly as he looked around the room. His best thing, remolded into something that didn't love him anymore, and he could only hope that, like Veronica, he would be able to find it again someplace else and make it work.

He drew the blinds, conscientious, and paused in front of the board on his way toward the door.

 _Have a good summer_ , it still read in his large slanted letters, and he smiled at the words. "You know, I just might," he said aloud, grateful and fearful and hopeful, and turned off the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm damn proud of myself! That was my first real, finished chapter fic and I think it did not go terribly. I want to thank the people who reviewed, recced, favorited and followed this story, both on fanfiction and AO3. I'm not joking when I say that I pushed through for you.
> 
> Before you ask, there will probably not be a sequel to this story. Repeat: no sequel. However, I do have a new oneshot that's already four pages long and should be posted pretty soon.
> 
> I had a great time with this. Thanks for rocking it with me.

**Author's Note:**

> For the first time in my life, I will actually finish a chapter fic. I have seven out of a probable eight chapters written (all longer than this one) and they should be posted weekly, I think on Fridays. Currently without a beta, but I kind of gave up on that because every time I tried, they fell through. Anyway buckle up, friends. I'm psyched. Are you psyched?


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